So why is it that my furnace always decides to go out just when it's really cold? This is the third time that it's gone out since we've lived here, and of course it picked the coldest week of the past year to do so. Currently it's 18 degrees outside, with a windchill of a whopping 4. I'm awake and in the living room working on a transcript due at 10:00a. Thank God that we actually have a place with a fireplace - it's been going literally nonstop since I woke up at 8:00am this morning. Unfortunately, since it's gas that means we've been burning money since nonstop this morning, but it's too damn cold to quibble about it. I've also got a space heater going right near me, too. And I'm still cold. If this goes on much longer I think we'll raid S.'s parents' wood pile - wood fires burn hotter, IMO, and don't cost money. :)

We already called our landlord, who has in turn called the home warranty company, who in turn has tried to call their vendors to have someone come out. But apparently this is happening quite a bit around town, so the vendors are stretched thin. They're supposed to call me back - if somebody doesn't call me by noon tomorrow today, then I'm calling the damn emergency paging service for the landlord. Although I don't know what the difference is there - is the landlord going to come out and fix our heater? Idk, idk.

Also, I fucking hate this transcript I'm working on. It's the longest one I've had, and it's almost completely indecipherable. The company knows it's almost completely indecipherable so they're giving me a 40% raise on this project, but it's still extremely frustrating and time-consuming. Argh. So I'm cold and pissy. Great. :\

ETA: I have errands to run, but I almost don't want to shower to go because it's going to be so cold when I get out! :(

Well, I suppose a lot has happened since I last posted.

I got accepted into library school, which is awesome. My first day is January 11th. I'm very impatient and ready to start!

I started working as a volunteer at my local public library, which turned out to be much more useful and cool than I thought it would be. I thought they might only let me shelve books or something since I'm just a volunteer, but the library director knows I'm going to school to be a librarian so she's put me to work. :) I've been working the circulation desk, shelving, checking books in/out, answering reference questions - it's all very cool.

I had a job interview last week for a Library Clerk position. It's about 45 minutes to an hour from my house, but I'd really rather drive that far for a position that I'd enjoy and that will help my career than drive 5 minutes for a retail job that pays less, I'd hate, and wouldn't go anywhere. The manager I met with said she'd be making a decision this week (probably around Wednesday), so if I hear from her I've got it and if I don't then I didn't. I'm very, very nervous since I want it so badly. :\ I almost want it too badly, so I'm trying not to think about it or agonize over my interview.

I also ran the 5K I was talking about last time! That was last weekend. I couldn't run/jog the entire thing, so I had to walk in places. But I finished, and that is a big feat for me. I jogged for 10 straight minutes, which is absolutely amazing considering how out of shape I was/am. So that was a big accomplishment for me.

Yeeep. That's all I got.

Well, I'm feeling very good about my living healthy/losing weight plan ATM. Yesterday I started the Couch to 5K plan (again) and I'm doing so much better on it this time. I think part of the reason is because I found these podcasts where not only does it have my kind of exercise music (upbeat pop) but in the intervals when you're supposed to switch from running to walking or vice versa it has a countdown to let you know. So that way I'm not constantly looking at my watch and counting the seconds until I get to walk again, or trying to remember what I should be doing at that point. I think it's helped a lot. I've taken Paris with me both times, and she starts to fall behind before I do! The first day I thought I was going to have to carry her 85-lb. ass home, LOL.

And I'm using Sparkpeople religiously - for some reason at this point it just clicked for me and is really helpful. According to the site I actually signed up in 2006, which means that somewhere along the way I had the idea but didn't follow through. But this time it's really helping me a lot. I track everything that I eat in it, even down to the meals I make at home. It helps a lot to see where I am calorie/nutrient-wise throughout the day, and I like the accomplishment of seeing that I'm within my calorie range for each day.

My goal for my Couch to 5K is that the 5K race that Steven runs every year aligns pretty perfectly with the end of the C25K program, so in a week or two I'm going to sign up for the race. I'm hoping that will give me even more incentive to continue with it since I'll have shelled out $20 for it. :) And if I make it and run the race - well, that's something I never thought would happen! I've never been an athlete or into exercise, so me running a 5K had never even occurred to me! :D

And I've lost 5 pounds! Which is not much in the scheme of things, but it makes me feel good. :)

I'm so happy that fall is almost here! October through December are my very favorite time of the year - I love the weather, the decorations, the holidays, the smells, the food, the crafty and cute ideas in magazines, just everything about it! Even despite my extremely limited budget, I bought a few fall/Halloween decorations for my fireplace and mantel and they make me very happy every time I look at them. I have to keep reminding myself that it's still September, actually, and people will think I'm a crazy person if I start decorating outside with Halloween stuff. This is actually the first year that we've had any sort of walk or outside area at all - previously (aside from living with my family, which doesn't count since they're not my decorations) I lived in an apartment with only a crooked tiny porch to decorate, which wasn't much fun. So I'm excited! I found this neat idea in October's Better Homes and Gardens where they attached a little bit of twine/rope to these small pale yellowish pumpkins, drew bats on the pumpkins with a Sharpie, and then hung the pumpkins from shepherd hooks along their walkway. I totally think I'm going to try that -it looks awesome in the magazine (I can't find a picture online) and it seems fairly easy and low-budget.

I finally took my GRE, and I think I did okay. I scored higher than the scores that were listed as requirements for my grad school, so I suppose that will work. And now I have my immunization form, so I need to go get it signed by a doctor and finish my essay and then most of my application materials will be done! I still have two recommenders who haven't turned in their forms and such, but that's pretty much out of my hands at this point besides just bugging them every so often. I thought my essay was coming along pretty well, but S. read it and pointed out a few things and now I'm nervous to send it in. I think any criticism, even constructive, makes me so nervous because I really need to get into this program. I'm sort of pinning all my hopes on this one since there's no others in my state and out of state tuition is pretty much out of the question. :\

Still no job. :(

I finished watching all the season 2 episodes of True Blood that were taking up space on my DVR. I totally loved it - way better than Season 1, IMO, which I didn't like very much. But then, I really liked the books previous to the series even existing, so I think I was biased. This season it was easier to take the series on its own merit, especially since one of my new favorite characters (Jessica!) was introduced and because Alexander Skarsgard is AH-MAZING as Eric.

Must shower now. I'm going to my first ever baseball game over at Turner Field with S.'s Contracts class. Yay!

Ahh..it's so nice to have a clean house. :DD I'm really terrible at housework almost all of the time - I'm lazy and hate to do it, which often leads to it just not happening. But yesterday we feverishly cleaned the living room in anticipation of my FMIL coming over, and tonight I did all the dishes that had piled up in the kitchen (it was insane), washed our drip pans (which never happens), and even cleaned underneath the stove top. Now everything is sparkling and clean and makes me feel so much better. I don't know why I can never remember this when I'm thinking about how much I hate to clean. :D

I was going to make some cookies, but the kitchen's so clean - I don't want to mess it up again. :)

Now, my bedroom is another story...that one's still messy. :)

I don't think I've posted about this yet, but I'm in the midst of applying to grad school.

I know that I've talked about how lost I've felt about the direction my life is going (or not going...) which has only gotten worse the longer I've been out of work. Being unemployed is just a soul sucker in so many ways that you just cannot appreciate until you're unwillingly unemployed. :\ So on a whim one day I looked up the program requirements for a Masters in Library and Information Science (which means becoming a librarian!) and found out that there's only one school in my state that offers the degree, and luckily it's a 90% online degree that's designed towards students who still need to work - which is pretty much exactly up my alley.

And wonders of wonders, they offer spring semester admission! So many grad schools I've looked into for other programs only offer fall admissions, and I've felt like I needed something NOW to get me moving again. So the deadline is October 15th, and I'm already halfway there on my application materials:

• Application
  
• Ask for 3 recommendations
  
• Essay
  
• Take the GRE (planning on Aug 26)
  
• Transcript
  
• Resume/CV
  
• Immunization forms
  

I'm studying really hard for the GRE...I'd forgotten a lot of the math portion and I'm basically just working my way through the review now instead of trying practice tests right now. Even the verbal portion is hard after being out of school for a couple of years...I imagine it's so much worse when you've been out of school for like 10 years. :O

Anyway. Yes. So that's going well, at least. Other things...not so well. But I suppose all of it will work itself out somehow. At least this one thing is on track for me.

I don't know what it is, but all of a sudden I am deep into a dress phase.

For years (as in, until a few months ago) I hated dresses. I hated skirts, hated dresses, bleh. But a few months ago I found a dress at JC Penney's for a cousin's wedding and it actually looked good on me. I unfortunately carry excess weight around my middle, so the fact that the dress didn't accentuate that like a lot of other clothes was high in its favor. And I felt pretty!

So now I am all about the dresses. I got a few the other day, and through a recent post on beauty101 I found out about Modcloth.com and I'm hooked. I think I bookmarked like 20 of their dresses. :D That's the kind of dress I like - a little bit vintage, kind of 40's secretary.

So now I have something to lust over. Also this umbrella is adorable. Whee!

Day Two of returned unemployment. *sigh* In late Jan/early Feb I got a temp job working for a large bank doing filing. Which sucked, but it was supposed to only be a 1-2 week job so I could survive it. But unfortunately my supervisor liked me so much she started farming me out to others in her department for more filing and assorted jobs. And one week stretched into two, and two weeks into three...and finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I fully needed the temp job, but I had to call the temp agency and ask them to get me out. :( It was undoubtedly not a smart idea, but not feeling the dread everyday to go there is worth it.

So now I'm unemployed again, and I've got to go back to the unemployment office to "reopen" my claim. I have a sneaking suspicion this means I'm going to have to go through all the same BS I did when I first opened the claim - the waiting just to speak to the receptionist, the waiting to go into their little seminar on "Unemployment: It can be easy!" and then waiting for a computer to actually file. BLARGH. It's sort of my plan for today, since I'd like to be able to file for this Sunday and they're not open on the weekends. And GOOD LUCK trying to get me to step foot in an unemployment office on a Friday - no thank you.

For some reason, it has been like an episode of the Three Stooges whenever I step into the kitchen lately. The other day I put margarine instead of butter into an alfredo sauce, and Steven had to stand over it for 30+ minutes trying to fix it. Then I left three of our new knives that are apparently not stainless steel in a half-filled bowl of water in the sink and they started to rust...Steven nearly flipped his shit. Today, I tried to use our new blender for the first time to make smoothies; I twisted off the blender part but didn't realize the bottom is OPEN and blackberry smoothie went EVERYWHERE. Steven was outside on the porch on the phone and I screamed for him so he came running...as soon as he saw what happened he cracked up laughing. *sigh*

It's like my brain clicks off as soon as I step into the kitchen. Which is annoying, since I'm not normally such a moron. Although I did make baked ziti the other day and it was really, really good. Unfortunately it made an enormous amount - the night I made it we probably only ate like 1/8th of it! So I learned my lesson on that one.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

I joined the community dogsintraining shortly before it appeared in the LJ Spotlight, and I must say that I am hooked. I guess it's silly, but I was pretty clueless about positive reinforcement and training the way that these folks do it, and I'm so excited to have found it. I have a whole list of books to read that I've heard recommended, and I'm starting clicker training with Paris. It's actually quite hard, because I can't afford obedience classes right now and I've never trained a dog on my own. Honestly, I've never even seen a dog trained properly - the people in my family either don't train them at all, or train them by smacking/kicking them around. :(

So I'm really excited about the whole thing, honestly. It's just slow going, and patience has never been my strong suite. It's especially difficult when these same people are sure that they know exactly how to train a dog, and persist in trying to smack my dog around and I have to get bitchy firm with them about not doing that again. My stepfather (an arrogant jackass on a good day) yelled at her the first hour we were here (home for the holiday) and when I told him I could discipline my own dog he retorted, "You've got to be firm with her." Asshole.

I picked up Patricia McConnell's book For the Love of a Dog the other day and I find it fascinating. It's all about dogs' emotions and body language and how they are similar/different from humans'.

And a picture of the brat girl:
( Read more... )

I can't believe that it's almost Halloween! This is my absolute favorite time of the year - I love that there are tons of decorations in the stores, and that the weather gets colder (I hate the heat!), and that it's a time when families get together and I can decorate my house for the season, and I just love it.

I've started getting the paper on Sundays, which might not have been a good idea for my wallet. Because although I'm a still a novice coupon clipper, that also means there are sale ads for places like Ulta and Target (I am such a Target whore). I'm getting ready to go blow some money there, and it is all the paper's fault. I firmly believe this. :D

Yesterday was my first day of training to volunteer at Furkids. I'm going to be working at the Petsmart that's by my house, and I'll go every week or two to clean out their cages and play with them for as long as I want. I lucked out, because apparently at this location they're all kittens - around 5-6 months old and they like to play. I emerged from yesterday with a kitten-related injury - two of the little beasties were chasing each other and they ran over my toe and a claw got my toe and made it bleed. :( There was one little guy I really liked; his name is Crisco and he was a little escape artist! We had the fencing set up, and he would look around to see if anybody was watching him and then he'd try to climb straight up over the fencing! Haha. And he liked to snuggle. So I fell in love with him a little bit. :)

I plan on adopting a cat from this organization, but I promised Steven that I wouldn't do so without his OK. Since that was a big issue when I got Paris, I'm not going to try to slip another one past him - that wouldn't be right. But I did tell him I'm going to do my hardest to get him to see that having a cat would be nice. :)

I'm very excited with myself - I've signed up for a Zumba class at a nearby dance studio. It starts Sept 13. I'm going to try really hard to get in shape, because the weight and lumpiness is just getting out of control for my taste. So I'm hoping if I go to class(es) that I will have the motivation to get moving, whereas if I was trying to do it all on my own it's much more difficult for me.

I also found a place nearby that does kickboxing; I plan on calling sometime today to find out schedules and pricing for that. If it's reasonable, I'm totally up for that too! I like having structure in my life; this is just the kind of stuff that I thrive on. :) If I don't have structure and busyness, I'm extremely lazy. It's weird that way.

My tentative goal is to lose 50 pounds in 6 months; if it's a little under, that's still OK. I just want to be on the way there by my 6 months mark. I feel like the weight will just start dropping off as soon as I start doing something, because right now I'm horribly out of shape because I hardly move around at all. So if I just start doing something and taking better care of myself, I'm confident that I'll be OK.

It's pouring today - I didn't even want to get out of bed. I just wanted to stay in my comfy bed and listen to the rain on the pond outside. :(

New layout! It's so pretty!

I came home for lunch today to find potatoes all over my floor. As in, baking potatoes. I had left a CLOSED bag on top of the counter, and although I'm being much more careful about what I leave out so that Paris doesn't get into anything bad again, I never dreamed she would go after potatoes. BLECH.

And I don't even think she did anything with them - she just flung them about the floor or something, because they were everywhere. :( It looked like a bowling league in my living room.

POTATOES. I have a ridiculous dog.

In other news, I found this job posting the other day, and it was like a shot in the ass for me - that is apparently what large companies look for in an office manager, so I'm going to start working towards learning those kinds of things. My boss said in my recent employee review that I should start working on learning how to cut costs, and even said that that is one of the functions of an office manager in larger companies. So I'm going to start - once the transition is made to my new boss (the old one is leaving) I'm going to bring up some ideas with her and hope that she's receptive.

Not only do I just want the experience, but I want the nasty little satisfaction of being able to put some ridiculously high number on my resume of how I've cut costs. MWAHAHA.

God, I am such a bureaucrat. D:

Wow. So I got Breaking Dawn the morning it came out, and spent that day reading it while at my uncle's lake house. And here's what I thought about it:

( .... )

Well, I went ahead and did it. I applied for a dog! I'm so ridiculously excited - they sent me a follow-up email just the next morning to ask for another personal reference since I don't have a vet reference, but I haven't heard anything yet. :( Neither one of my references have been contacted yet - I'm so anxious and impatient!

The apartment is slowly getting itself together. I've been going through boxes slowly but surely, and last night Steven and I actually made a real dinner. We had turkey schnitzel, a salad, and rice. I was so proud. :D After we did dishes (together!), we walked down behind the apartments to the river. It was really nice - I'm so pleased with my choice of apartments. It's so close to my work, but I can just go down to the clubhouse and I'm literally right on the Chattahoochee. And luckily, it's north enough that the Chattahoochee is still nice - once you get south of Atlanta it's really quite disgusting. :(

We also wandered down to the fitness center the other night - I'm quite pleased with it. There's just about anything that I could need - treadmill, elliptical, stationary bikes, and all sorts of weight equipment. So I'm going to start going down the gym in the evenings, and maybe work off some of this fat! :( I've been trying to be a little more careful about what I eat - I've cut out soda, and just generally keeping an eye on what I'm eating - and I think I've lost about 5-8 pounds. And although that's good, I'm about 40 pounds overweight for my height. So it's a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

OK, I'm going to go try to unpack some more boxes now. They'll be doing a home visit before I can adopt my dog, so I really want the house to look nice and not so "just moved in".

So now I am finally in my own apartment, and it is fantastic! Unfortunately, it hasn't really had time to sink in yet - we moved everything Saturday, and my mother and brother have been staying with me ever since. So I haven't even really been alone with it yet to really feel like it's truly my place. And Steven is coming over tonight and will probably stay until the weekend as well.

Hopefully this weekend I get more done than the last - since it was Father's Day we had lots of family stuff to do. FINALLY, I don't think there's anything that I'm required to do this weekend. So now I've fallen to plotting how I want to decorate.

I've splurged most of my money on the start-up costs - including groceries, sheets, etc. I've finally got working internet and TV, and I have a DVR! I can't wait until I'm alone with it so that I can play with it and record all my shows. :DDD Speaking of, I've very recently discovered The Office and am in love.

I was browsing through my dog adoption sites last night, and came upon Percy. It's so hard not to be in love! He sounds like such a sweetie, and I just want to kiss that little blaze down his face. I know that I shouldn't even apply yet for a dog because I just moved in, but their adoption process sounds moderately lengthy - first you apply, then you have to go to an adoption event (next one is June 28th!), and then there's a home visit, and then if you passed you get your pup. I'm so, so tempted because I want a dog so badly. :( And then, on the feline side of it, there's J-Lo and Drew (you have to scroll to find them). HOW CUTE ARE THEY.

Work is slow today, so back to plotting now.

Well, this just sucks. One of my few days to gloriously sleep in...and I wake up at 6:00am and can't go back to sleep. Dammit. :(

Good news, everyone! I spoke to one of my bosses sometime...last week, think? He said that I'm doing a really good job, that he thinks I'll be an asset to the company...and they want to hopefully hire me on as a permanent employee at the end of February. Which is next week omg! So now I'm just on pins and needles waiting for them to talk to me again, as well as to see how much they're going to offer me. When he asked if my temp agency had ever said anything about compensation, I put him off - but then he asked again, so I gave him a bit of an inflated number, which backfired because he was like "REALLY?!" and immediately asked when I had gotten out of school and what I'd been doing since then. He then progressed into a spiel about how I'm getting such great experience here, which I took to mean "You're getting great experience for your career, don't bitch if we don't pay you as much as you're wanting." So, I'm a little worried about that. But I think it should turn out all right - even if they paid me just 2k more than what I'm making as a temp (which is the pretty standard amount), that would be my ideal salary that I was seeking. The rest I was just being greedy. :D

So, this means something fabulous: I CAN GET AN APARTMENT! Well, not right this second, but soon. I'm aiming for mid- to late March, so I can save up a little bit of money, since my root canal is going to cost me a pretty penny. But...YAY! This is what I've been waiting for for almost a year, and soon it's going to happen! The only bummer is that obviously Steven is not out of school yet and therefore can't move in with me. But honestly? There's no telling how long it would take him to find a job after he graduates (hell, it took me almost a year!) and I don't know how much longer I can wait. Things are...tense between me and my grandmother. So I am itching to go. She even said she would give me the bed I have now and her couch. The couch is kind of ugly, but it's a couch! That's less money that I have to spend right out of the gate, and that's always good.

So now I'm going to scour Craigslist and ApartmentFinder, and price utilities and comforters and SQUEE THIS ALL MAKES ME SO HAPPY. Soon I can get a kitty!^[1] I think having a cat (or dog) will cut down on the loneliness - I'm with Steven pretty much all of the time that I'm not driving home or at work, and I know it will be a shock when he's not there. I was desperately lonely when I lived alone my junior year of college, so I know that getting a cat or dog will be great for me. Also, PUPPY/KITTY SNUGGLES!

Lord, I'm loopy. I'm excited!



^[1]I would love to have a dog (and a cat!) but cats are so much more low-maintenance, and I think I'll need that right out of the gate. I'd also like to split dog-walking with Steven, so I can wait for a dog until he moves in. Or...gah, I don't know! I want them both so badly. :(

So today I went to the dentist for the first time in like...two or three years. My wisdom teeth have been bothering me, so I knew that I had to make an initial appointment for them to say, "Oh hai, you need your wisdom teeth taken out! Let's set an appointment for that!" So in I went. They cleaned my teeth, took x-rays and all that jazz, and told me that yes, I did need all four wisdom teeth taken out.

Unfortunately, I also need a root canal before I can get them taken out. :( And Jesus, that's apparently $1400 after insurance kicks in! Yikes. :( There went my hopes of saving money for an apartment this summer, because even after that $1400 I have to pay to have my wisdom teeth out! Steven's mom said that when his sister got hers out that it cost about $600, so...yuck. Stupid, stupid teeth. Hopefully except for cleanings I won't have to mess with them for a while after this!

I think that I'm getting brave enough about keeping my job that I might take a picture frame in to sit on my desk. I think I'll put the picture of Steven and I kissing in the snow in it - although my hair looks AWFUL. I don't know what I was thinking; that would have been a gorgeous picture if I didn't have my short ass little hair tied up in a ponytail. :( And really, what's the likelihood of a photo opportunity in the snow happening again? Georgia gets real snow like every five years if we're lucky. Most of the time it's just ugly slush that makes everyone flip out and call it a blizzard and run for the bottled water and candles in the grocery store. Oh well, I'm just going to overlook my ugly hair for the otherwise cuteness.

Here's a random question: do you ever write checks? I don't ever write them for purchases like at a store, but I love writing checks for my bills that I pay through the mail. So much so that even though I could pay them all online, I choose not to. I love it even more now that I have my checks that have a pretty pattern on them rather than my plain original ones from the bank.

So, I got the job that I interviewed for right after Christmas. WOOT. I have three fancy titles all rolled into one massive job - Executive Assistant to the CEO, Office Manager, and HR Manager. I can tell that I'm going to be extremely busy, and I am so incredibly excited about it. Unfortunately, it is another temp to hire job, but the pay and the opportunity (I'm a freaking office manager!) were just too good to pass up. The contract period is 16 weeks, which will put me right about the first of May to be hired on, which is just about when Steven will graduate. I don't know if he will move in with me or not (I'm still hoping, but I'm trying really hard not to press the issue, because that will not get me anywhere), but I'm going to try to save as much money as I can until then so I can move in somewhere.

So until then, I'm torturing myself by watching lots of HGTV, Food Network, and ravenously updating pet adoption sites and saucydwellings and other assorted home-related LJ communities. I especially thought this was cool - it's a girl who is renovating her house a la "Flip this House" and it totally makes me want to buy a messed up house and renovate however I want.

Steven bought me a ring for Christmas, but it was way too big. :( He bought the protection plan with it, so I took it in to be sized. It's going to take two weeks to get it back! Even though I hadn't been wearing it that long, I miss my ring. :( Although it freaks everybody out (the family doesn't want me to even consider marrying Steven) I like to wear it on my left ring finger. It makes me remember that if I'm ever being paranoid about our relationship that he does love me. :) It's like a tattoo, only removable. Haha.