moriath

So working at Borders pretty much sucked the life out of me. I was totally not meant to be an office drone. Doing the exact same brain-numbing thing every day was killing my desire to do anything but sleep. Oh, and killing my back. And my wrist. I've decided that eventually my entire generation is just going to have carpal tunnel, because all we ever do is sit in front of computers.

Yeah, anyway, so yesterday was my last day at Borders. It came about for a couple of reasons. Primarily the soul-sucking-ness of it all, but also because Billy and I were just BORED OUT OF OUR SKULLS and a little depressed that we weren't doing anything with our lives that involved our expensive degrees. I have to start paying back that money in June and $10.75 an hour just wasn't going to help with that.

So quitting Borders gave us the impetus to say that by July we're going to move out to New York. I've been frantically submitting my resume to all of the publishing houses I can think of since I want to go into publishing. At least for a little while. I'm going to do one more office job, and if I can't handle that again I'm going back to school to get my media studies degree. I have absolutely no problem parlaying my geekiness into a degree, lol.

In the meantime, I'm going to start writing porn. Lol. No, seriously, Billy has been pushing me forever to try my hand at writing "real" stuff (smutty fan fic doesn't count). I've always refused because I've just never felt the drive to write anything original. I could come up with characters galore but nothing to do with them. Then he suggested romance novels, which seemed even more preposterous. I'd never read a romance novel in my life, how the hell could I write one? Why would I want to?

Except that romance novels can now double as porn. I've been reading a few of Harlequin's Spice novels and...they're not half bad. Some of them are not as great as the others(this month's novel, What Happens in Vegas... has some ridiculous plots that are totally just tired old romance novels with explicit sex), but essentially they're not much different from some of the fic I've written. It's all about sex; I can write sex. Seems like a perfect match.

So I'm dedicated June to bashing out the first draft of the novel. I already have a couple of chapters finished written (I'm sure I'll go back at some point and read them and ask WTF I was thinking). It'll be my own personal NaNoWriMo. Then at a later point I can go back and see if the darn thing actually makes sense.

Wedding plans are coming along fairly smoothly. Getting ready to send out save the dates soon (mental note: need to get addresses from Billy's mom. And forensa-addresses from...whoever has those at the wedding today. Marisa? Anke?). Doing a final round of bridesmaid dress shopping at the end of June with Carling.

And speaking of weddings, I have another forensics-related one to go to later today. That makes 3 forensics-weddings in less than a year. RIDICULOUS. And then in August two of our former coaches are getting married. And then there's a break until February...which is mine. That is still so surreal to think about. Over Memorial Day weekend Billy's brother had a barbecue that a bunch of the family went to. At one point while I was chatting with some of our friends there the whole Coffing family was gathering for a big picture. I was completely oblivious (I think we were having a really interesting conversation) until Billy's dad started calling me over. I "said yes" so now I had to be included in the family portrait. SO WEIRD.

Anyway, need to go start getting ready for Lauren's wedding. I need to go rouse Billy from bed and then dye my hair. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay hair dye.

It gets a little bit harder to get out of bed.

I'm seeing Indiana Jones at 12:10 tonight :-D That should make sitting through work a little more bearable.

7 more days of work and then I'M FREE.

Woot woot!

But they confuse the hell out of Billy's and my family's. Both my grandmother and Billy's mom want to know why there is a picture of our feet (my shoes are WORKS OF ART. They should be worshipped thusly more often!). And my mom is convinced the one with the sun glare is "obviously a bad picture." Bah. She doesn't know Art.

More when the full gallery is online. I can't waaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! Maybe I'll have the energy to put together a coherent entry by then (leaving my job in a few weeks. FINALLY.)

Also? Iron Man pwns.

I picked up my package from UPS this afternoon. I pried apart all of the tape sealing the box while I was in the parking lot to discover a bottle of wine. I was still confused 'cause Billy and I aren't exactly wine drinkers.

When I got home and could inspect the package fully, I discovered a card inside. From our photographer.

SHE IS AMAZING. I LOVE HER.

This is in stark contrast to the fact that, according to the electronic copy of the invoice from the hotel, I should have a hard copy of my hotel contract in my hands TODAY. Instead I have a 2005 Smoking Loon Chardonnay that I have no idea what to do with. But it's the thought that counts, right?

Going out to Ichiban with Billy, James and Rachel soon. Good. 'Cause I'm starving.

Oh! My computer is back at Best Buy. They had to replace the hard drive. Boooooo. But that means all of the repairs were covered under my warranty. Yay! Now I'm just paying $29 to have them optimize it because I really don't want to sit through hours of Windows updates. It's a small price to pay for convenience.

Saw the forensics team off this morning. And by "off" I mean I was there until the bus arrived, 'cause the bus didn't even show up until the time I had to leave. I delivered little notes of encouragement to all of the students. Wrote most of them in the span of a couple of hours last night (it would have been less, but I spent some of that time talking to Rb, then taking a shower and watching Eli Stone); practice for thank you notes, I figure. It was fun writing out all of the inside jokes I've accumulated with people over the years (oh, and I TOTALLY rickroll'd Jon Stowell. A real life, text-based rickroll. 'Cause I'm awesome like that).

I miss the team already :-( I so wish I'd been able to go with them! Work SUCKS like that. But I know the team is going to do AWESOME. Hey, Lauren, if you read this: are you sending your letter to the Hotmail address? I never got a chance to print mine out and in the craziness that was this morning I never had a chance to ask Amy where I should send it.

Okay, I think I need to find a snack before dinner, because yes, I am THAT hungry.

I got home from work this evening to find a note from UPS on my door. Apparently I have a package from here waiting for me. That's my best guess, at least. When you Google "GB Russo & Son" that's the first hit, and the package originated in Grand Rapids. So...yeah.

In case you haven't guessed yet, I definitely did not order anything from them. I've never even heard of them until I Google'd it. I have no idea what's going on. I can only imagine my mom sent me something, but no one's home answering the phone so I have no way of finding out.

I also don't get to pick it up until tomorrow after work. Boo. And since they're only open until 6, just like the bank, I need to go there INSTEAD of the bank, which THUS means I'll have to wake up obnoxiously early on Saturday to go to the bank to deposit my paycheck. Stupid UPS. Why can't I choose what UPS location I use to pick up my package? 'Cause there's a place that's actually on my way home from work where I could have picked it up. It's so convenient that I probably could have gone there AND the bank in one fell swoop. And even if I couldn't, that place is open on Saturdays.

In short, UPS=Lame

Work also=lame because the team leaves for Nationals tomorrow. Without me. THAT SUCKS. I'm going to get to see the team off, though, which will be nice. Wish them all luck one last time and all that.

Dammit. That means I'm going to have to e-mail my letter. I meant to write it while I was at work today so I could print it out, but we are crazy overloaded so no writing for me. And since I still don't have my computer from Best Buy, the printer on my desk is pretty much worthless.

In other news, Billy has convinced me that I need to start writing romance novels. Especially for these people. Any thoughts?

My job requires me to be on the phone for roughly half of the day. Every couple of minutes I'm on the phone talking to publishers, customers, etc.

...

I'm sorry, I was distracted by a Burger King commercial. Morning tongue?! Ew.

Anyway.

So today after work I went and got dinner with Billy. And then got home and I was so proud of myself 'cause I got right to work with wedding stuff. Yay me. One DJ has called me once every day this week, so I figured it was about time I called him back.

It was a pretty good conversation. A long one (half an hour). But he actually already has Pirates music in his repertoire...pretty spiffy.

He also was the cheapest DJ I'd talked to so far. Until I got an e-mail from someone offering 7 hours of DJing for $450...which is so cheap I have to wonder what's wrong, lol.

Okay. So long day at work on the phone, then half an hour with the DJ, then another half an hour with Billy, in which I passed the buck on the DJ search. The DJ is super important to Billy so...why not make that his wedding chore? I'm sure I'm going to do all of the actual scheduling. Not because I don't trust Billy but because I am ANAL RETENTIVE when it comes to this wedding planning stuff. I am going to drive people BATSHIT INSANE on the wedding day because I'm going to want to set up all of the tables myself. I'm trying to do 99% of this thing myself, not necessarily to save money, but because I want to be in complete and utter control.

At some point I am going to have a nervous breakdown. But tonight is not that night.

I topped my day of phone calls off with a call home to beg for money, lol. I want to put down my deposit for at the very least the photographer this week, if not the DJ as well. So I asked my parents for some of the wedding money to be put in my bank account so that Billy's family isn't paying all of our deposits. Next budgeting task: figure out what I should ask Billy's family to pay for and what I should ask my family to pay for. So then I'll know who to turn to as deposits are needed.

Oh, update on ditzy Amanda at the hotel: there was an e-mail waiting for me in my work e-mail box this morning (she sent it at, like, 5:02 yesterday). She'd "forgotten" about the deposit because she gets so excited about the actual planning process. Yeah. She's going to have as little to do with the planning as I can possibly get away with. She said she'd send me an invoice...which I still don't have. I don't know if I'm going to bother e-mailing her back; I might just go to whoever is above her and say I'm tired of dealing with her and her flakiness.

Okay. Shower then sleep. All alone :-( I miss Billy.

even though I haven't actually done anything. Except:

*E-mailed the photographer to find out what we need to pay for our deposit and how she'd like us to get it to her. (Mental note: after we pay we need to figure out a Sunday for her to come out to Ypsi to do our engagement photos...)
*E-mailed the hotel to find out what the hell we're supposed to be paying and if they'd ever actually like their money (I'm so not impressed with how they've been handling things here...but the location is pretty sweet for the reception, I can live with a lackluster ceremony room, and I really don't want to trek back to Holland to look at more venues!)
*E-mailed my English prof from last semester to schedule a time to meet with her so I can get feedback on my Uglies paper.

Speaking of, I got to pimp Uglies like whoa this week. One of the women I work with, Megan, has a younger sister who has just picked up Uglies and seems to love it. So first I told Megan OMG she had to read it, too. And then Megan asked me to recommend a whole bunch of other books for her sister since said sister has never been a big reader and Megan is hoping that if she plies her with lots of books, the sister might keep reading. So that was fun :-)

I've been going in to work early/staying late all week thanks to our department being hugely backed up thanks to not having been at full staff since the beginning of the month. The killer cold/flu/whatever keeps taking people out. Not cool. Well, except for the overtime I earned. Not an insane amount, but enough so that maybe next week Billy and I can finally open a savings account and start saving money for New York/the wedding/whatever.

And today I got to sleep in until 10:30. That's when Marisa woke me up, lol, wanting me to...do something. (Knock on Doug's door?) I could have gone back to sleep, but I hate sleeping away my day off. But still, 10:30 was like sleeping forever considering yesterday I woke up at 6, and was waking up at 6:30 for the rest of the week thanks to wanting to go in early for the aforementioned overtime.

I have no idea what I'm going to do now. I still want to get started on wedding stuff. I should start working on save the dates. Especially since in a fit of genius/insanity I decided the other day that I want to stamp them (my mom used to be a huge stamper, and I loved playing around with them when I was a kid. This could be a lot easier than trying to design something on the computer). Maybe I'll go buy some stamps today and start playing around?

I should probably clean the kitchen table first so I'd have someplace to actually lay everything out. ~sigh~ My apartment needs so much work (including a good repair-person, since Gopher managed to break our towel rack yesterday).

Best Buy wants $140 to reinstall Windows. Seriously?

Please tell me I know someone who can do it for significantly less.

Also: they put waaaaaaaaay too much garlic on my pizza at lunch. And I
loooooooove garlic, so that's saying something.

Work today is crazy. It's nice to be busy, but it's not helping the
funk I'm in due to PMS (stupid doctor not re-prescribing my birth
control in time. I DO NOT WANT TO BLEED THIS WEEK. Or any week,
really, but I'm digressing) + not going to prep + crazy complicated
orders.

Queen doing "Big Spender"

I love Freddie Mercury. SO MUCH.

Sorry I've been AWOL for awhile. Work is sapping my will to live. And while I come up with lots of stuff to blog about during the day, we have a strict "no blogging" policy at work. I can do everything else on the intarwebz (well, except stream music, but that's just 'cause it crashes the computers) except blog.

Except I just noticed that by having a paid account I can post by e-mail. So perhaps I'll start doing that next week.

A wrench has been thrown in my BRILLIANT wedding plans because some asshole at the county clerk's office seems to think that people who are ordained through the ULC aren't able to perform marriages in Michigan (or at least Ottawa county. "We certainly don't allow those in Ottawa county" are the exact words the dude on the phone said to me, in the most condescending tone I've heard in awhile). And I had a BRILLIANT idea to have my dad marry us. It'd be beautiful and sweet and people would be crying and I'd giggle at them, lol. Because that's the most important part of the wedding for me: I have to be entertained as well during this shindig. Hence our amazing processional music.

But in non-bogus wedding news, I'm finally going to be able to talk to our coordinator at the hotel tomorrow. Apparently her e-mail server hates me and hasn't been sending her messages to me. So I sent her an e-mail today that kinda hinted we were getting worried about the lack of communication (totally true) and might end up going elsewhere (totally untrue. We really like this place). So she called me this evening while I was at Billy's Borders and we're going to talk on the phone early tomorrow afternoon.

Speaking of Billy's Borders, OMGIT'S AMAZING. If you've seen anything in the news about the Concept Stores Borders is rolling out, Billy works at the first one. And I love it. The digital mix and burn center is where I got the CD I'm listening to now. I think I've pretty much completed my Queen collection at this point, at least of the songs I already know and love. But I need to ask Billy why I couldn't download the potentially amazing version of "The Show Must Go On" with Elton John. I couldn't ask him while I was at the store because HOLY CRAP was it packed tonight. They were holding an open house for all of us corporate people, and I think everyone in the office showed up (except for the women I hang out with, of course).

I think I'm out of useful thoughts to post. So I will leave with these: SAD FACE!!!!!!! OMG SQUEE and KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In mid-December I started handing out my resume all over the place and got a call for one job: Borders.

After they were taking longer to contact me than they said they would, I started putting out a new set of resumes a month later. In the past two weeks I have had four phone calls and two e-mails asking for interviews for positions ranging from glorified secretary (yay working the front desk at the vet's office) to being an administrative assistant for Lockheed Martin.

WTF, world?

My job at Borders starts Monday. It had better be all kinds of awesome.

What's definitely awesome: LOST starts tonight! I finally get to watch it in real time, rather than going through a whole season in three days on DVD!

I got the job with Borders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I start on February 4th, at 8 am (ugh). Though it's a one day thing so that I can watch training videos and get my picture taken for my ID and stuff. After that I work at 9 or 9:30 (my choice!) until 5 or 5:30, respectively.

I AM SO EXCITED.

I will also be earning more money per hour than I ever have in my life. Which will make saving up for the wedding/move to New York that much easier. Which is also sweet.

So I think next week I'm going to take off for Holland for a day or two to (hopefully) sign a contract with our reception/ceremony location people. And then I'm hoping to hop on a train to go visit my Chicago-based bridesmaid. Or perhaps vice-versa depending on various people's schedules.

SO EXCITED.

I have a second interview with Borders on Monday!

So I turned in my final college paper today. Early, even; I was finished at 1 o'clock and it wasn't due until 5.

Saw one of my previous professors as I was dropping it off. He asked how I was doing and if I was done. I told him I was in the process of turning in my last paper and he said congratulations and also that it must be a little scary.

I hadn't had time to think about it yet, but HOLY FUCK IS IT EVER.

So I came home and went on a resume blitz. And by blitz I mean I've submitted to...four companies? Something like that. There aren't a lot of jobs in the area for an entry level college grad with a degree in English and comm. I'm really banking on forensics to help me out.

I was going to settle for just working some boring retail job for a couple of months until the lease on Billy's and my apartment runs out, but then I realized that I have no money, and minimum wage, even at full time, isn't going to get me enough money to pay my rent, bills, groceries and save for a move to New York. So here's hoping I get a real job.

Background for my new friends: I work at an NPR-affiliate station on campus. No, I'm not on the air doing anything glamorous; I spend my afternoons inputting information about CDs into a computer. It's extremely boring, but as far as part time jobs go it could be a lot worse (see: my two years working in two different lingerie stores).

As part of my job I have the pleasure of coming across some amazingly unfortunate names. Like Dick Hyman. Or Steven Segal (yes, he in fact has TWO blues albums. Who knew?)

Here's today's addition:

Daubert Nobacon

Life would truely be sad if there were no bacon in it :-(