July 2001's news

July 31, 2001:

Stayed up late into the wee hours updating. I hope you like it. My old friend Rod is in town! I haven't seen him in ages! Jacob and Julie and Rod came over and ate cake. All of us played Merchant of Venus, and Jacob gave everyone else a royal trouncing.

July 30, 2001:

Cut myself shaving this morning. The funny part is, I've been testing out a Mach 3 razor I got in the mail, and now I have two perfectly parallel and horizontal 1" cuts in my right cheek. What happened with the third blade? I want my money back! This week I plan to rearrange this news page and make the first page of webcomic recommendations and reviews. I'm waffling between putting all news together onto a single page, or breaking it down into a weekly or biweekly format. I'll have to diagram it out. I'd prefer to keep the site layout as convolution-free as I can. This site, for instance, has tons of awesome information, but try clicking on the guitar-building links. Aargh! They go everywhere, link to each other some of the time, and not others, and don't have an immediate link to a much better page on the site that's ALSO an index to the guitar-building process.

July 29, 2001:

Cleaned and cleaned. Vacuumed the downstairs, did a little pear-removal. Lee baked an awesome chocolate mousse cake.

July 28, 2001:

Woke up early, worked on scanning photos, didn't get very far. I hate all my editing software. I have always relied on the free software that I get with scanners and so forth, and thus, I have very limited editing capabilities. One of the packages I have is crippled so it has no Undo command. The features actually look great, but I'll never know. I need Undo as a safety net. Found a missing Merchant of Venus cardboard chit upstairs in my room. I lost it before we moved, and I was afraid I was going to need to scribble on one of the other, less-important pieces. Work was slower than I expected.

July 27, 2001:

Didn't do much at work. Went back to the bookstore over my lunch hour, and bought another book. I wasn't dressed up as much, so the owner didn't recognize me and gave me the whole hoo-haa-welcome-to-my-shop-bla-bla-bla again. The bookstore's cat is really well-groomed. Usually, bookstore cats are overgrown big fat cats that are dropping fist-sized wads of hair, but I really enjoyed dealing with their cat. Also, I bought a book. Day five of a six-day work week. How did that happen? I can't remember now; last week seems so long ago.

July 25, 2001:

Went to work, then crawled at no-miles-an-hour up to a job interview. I got there a half-hour late, but we really hit it off, and ended up chatting for an hour and a half. I feel better about this position, it's more responsibility, and it's much closer to home. Also found a bookstore that I've seen signs advertising for several years, but never investigated. Not a bad little shop, has trading. They had no Philip K. Dick novels, but they did have a couple of other books. I read one of them at work and the other one when I got home. Twelve hours on the road, out at 8:10 AM, back at 8:10 PM.

July 24, 2001:

Still one apartment left. Spent a two-hour lunch break at an interview for a permanent position. There's a second interview for it, me vs. four other candidates. I've got another interview at a different, closer property tomorrow night. I won a game of Merchant of Venus, but Lee was really close to winning, too. I also learned I won the Ebay auction for a copy of GDW's Minion Hunter boardgame.

July 23, 2001:

Leased two apartments at the 100% property; they have one apartment left, at all, any time, for me to get rid of this week. Also arranged an interview for tomorrow, worked towards a second one, and mailed Amy's package. Lee made wine-poached chicken with gemelli in asiago sauce. Very tasty.

July 22, 2001:

Cleaned up fallen pears. I don't think I'd done that for three weeks. The pear tree dropped about forty or fifty pears in that time, mostly on top of the carport. The carport is rusting where the pears are decaying up there, so I had to climb up the tree, balance on the edge of the carport, and use a rake to pull the pears into grabbin' distance, where I grabbed them with my trusty grabbin' gloves.

July 21, 2001:

Lee and I caught up on the filing. She beat me at Merchant of Venus, a terribly fun Avalon Hill boardgame. This is her second victory in a row. The game plays well with two to four players, and supports up to six. Also began copying Hana Yori Dango fansubs. I even went so far as to get a package together to send to my sister Amy for her birthday (I haven't sent it yet). We finished the day by going to Wolf and Ashlea's place for a barbecue. I cooked sweet corn on the grill, and it was really good.

July 20, 2001:

Worked at a property that's almost 100% leased.

July 18, 2001:

Spent the morning coding bills. It was relaxing to sit in the plush manager's chair in the big comfy office and just crank out the paperwork. I heard my co-workers give unanimous thumbs-up to the movie "Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo," which I have not seen. All but one of them attempted to replicate a scene where a woman with Tourette's Syndrome goes berserk. During the middle of the discussion, a UPS driver came in, and they said "Deuce Bigalow," and HE started doing the scene. Finished the day by weaseling ANOTHER day at the property, then got home to discover They Might Be Giants' "Apollo 18" CD in my mailbox, and a gushing response to a resume I had emailed. Wow, they want to hire me sooooo bad. To cap the day, Lee and I went to Jacob and Julie's and hung out. Powerful good stuff.

July 17, 2001:

Went to my first temp assignment after over three months at the same property. My leasing skills are rusty, but my filing and impressing skills work. If I can't get a job offer by the end of the day, I'm disappointed. Fortunately, I got a job offer. It was supposed to be a one-day assignment, but I used my puppy-dog eyes to score an additional day coding bills (normally the manager's job).

July 16,2001:

Spent the day tracking down job leads. Also went to the library and turned the speed-reading up all the way to jam through some mediocre L.E. Modesitt. I don't think I've really turned it up that high in a long time. Like Krazy Kat says, "Laughing takes time... and time is short!" I might have enjoyed it more had I taken more time, but I doubt it. I checked out four books, including another Modesitt, and read that one this evening. I did get a one-day assignment at a property downtown. I told my temp handler, "Hey, I'd rather work than be at home talking about how close I would be to home, if I were working." He got the message. A depressing day, dressing up for work and then wandering around the house, surfing monster.com and Yahoo! careers. Also returned Outlaw Star V2, and rented Brain Powerd (sic) volume 1, a weird giant robot series. It was weirder than it was good, and the rental tape was defective (or both my vcrs are suddenly broken, after seven and five years of flawless service, ha ha). Hana Yori Dango continues to impress and delight me. So sue me.

July 14, 2001:

I swept a bunch of leaves and dirt out of our carport before it got too hot. I sent out some resumes after searching on monster.com. Typical searches: "apartment" "lease" "college" "editor" "English" "entry level," and so forth. The most I could possibly expect to earn is $30K, but there are several jobs that looked interesting. I rented volume 2 of Outlaw Star and borrowed two tapes of Hana Yori Dango from Jacob. Surreal moment of the day: pricing cycling gear at the Bike Barn in Rice Village. Outlaw Star was okay, I guess. After seeing the first four episodes, I have concluded it's exactly half as cool as it needs to be. Cowboy Bebop has the same number of episodes per tape, and is twice as good. Manicotti for dinner (cheeses: colby jack, mozzarella, and asiago). Checked the mail at midnight, and found an Ebay purchase waiting for me: Monopuff's "The Devil Went Down to Newport (Totally Rocking)."

July 13, 2001:

I got treated to a farewell lunch from my Leasing Coordinator assignment. Everybody was really nice. It was disconcerting. I thought I had done a pretty good job, but they were giving me star treatment. Free lunch special at Fuddruckers, and they even paid to upgrade my pie to Key Lime. I am cool. I got hugs and handshakes from everyone right before I left. Then I gave blood. Fast donation, zero pain, thank-you-drive-through. Resina, my phlebotomist, was excellent. She said, "Never mind what you see on TV. We're always short." I put one more unit of B- in circulation, now it's up to everybody else in Houston.

July 12, 2001:

My long-term temp assignment is finished, and I got to hang out with Mike (and help him move the last of his stuff). I then got to hang out with Jacob and his MBA compatriot Cory. Today I had a chicken burrito con chile con queso at Jaliscience for lunch, and had quesadillas (one fajita, one pollo) at Ruchi's Taqueria for dinner. Today was just that good. If you have feedback, or even better, a job for me, send me email!

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