moriath

So today it took for fucking ever to get lunch. I went to the Bistro Truck, which I loved during their soft opening but today I swear it took 20 minutes to get a fucking burger. I watched FIVE people who ordered after me get their food before I did (one person ordered as my burger was put in it's cardboard tray...and then she GOT HER FOOD before they acknowledged my poor burger). They slightly made up for it by not charging me, and by having an effing delicious burger, but only slightly. I might try them again - but only when I take the subway down to Union Square. With the walking too much of my lunch time is taken up.

But after I got my burger and was on my way to the park, this woman randomly stopped me on the sidewalk to compliment my "look." I thanked her and was about to move on when she asked me what I did for a living.

I don't know how I feel about this, but I swear my first thought was "omg, isn't this how models get discovered?!" Not that I have any illusions about a possible career in modeling, but it was my first thought.

Turns out the woman was a Mary Kay "Independent Sales Director" and wants to meet with me to discuss being a Mary Kay sales assistant, LOL. Yes, the girl who hardly knows her way around a foundation compact should be selling expensive makeup. But I took her card and who knows what will happen?

Still, totally bizarre.

I just gotta say, today got off to a rough start. People are not meant to be awake at 6:30 in the morning - especially when they went to sleep at 12:30 (I put Sims 2 back on my computer yesterday and spent most of the day playing it). But it turned out pretty awesome.

Work had its stressful moments - I'm now in charge of finding substitute books when an individual title in an assortment is out of stock (in laymen's terms: sometimes a store will say "I want 100 kids books" so we put together an assortment of kids books - 32 titles with 3 books each and a 33rd with 4 books . But since we just grab randomly from our inventory, sometimes we'll come up with a title or two for an order that is out of stock or is being stored at a different warehouse. So now my job is to find replacements for those titles). I used to only have to find a book in the same category, but now I need to find books that match the category AND the same price, that hasn't already been included in the assortment. It's a tall order sometimes, but I'm managing.

Day was brightened first by getting ice cream at my favorite Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. Doug, the guy dishing out the ice cream all day, is always SO cheerful and smiley. I don't know how he does it. And his toppings are always fabulous - blueberries with saba is my new favorite thing ON THE PLANET.

Day got a million times better when I came home and found a card in the mail from my cousin Jenny. Jenny and I were never close, because her mother's a little crazy and was hellbent on keeping her husband (my mom's brother) and her kids away from his side of the family (this came out after their messy divorce, caused by her affair with the band teacher). So we were never close, but I know in the aftermath of the divorce my mom and uncle have gotten close again and on the few occasions I've been back in Michigan for family gatherings I got to see him and Andy, which used to be rare.

I haven't seen Jen in ages, however, because she moved out to Baltimore 5 years ago, and it always worked out that when she would go back to Michigan for holidays, I had plans elsewhere. But I've kept minor tabs on her through my mom, and that's how I found out late last year that cousin Jenny was gay and living with her girlfriend.

When it was time to send out wedding invitations, I knew I wanted to invite Jen and her girlfriend, but no one was getting me the girlfriend's name before the invite NEEDED to go out, so it ended up going to Jen & Guest. The day after the invitation went in the mail, of course, Mom called to say "Oh, yeah, the girlfriend is named Sarah." ~sigh~ So I sat down and wrote Jen a nice long note telling her that the "and guest" wasn't meant as some sort of slight, I just hadn't known Sarah's name! I assured them that, despite the wedding being in Holland, they wouldn't be the only gay people there and told Jen that I was bisexual.

So today I get the card from Jen, addressed to Billy and I and hyphenating our last names, which made me giggle. It was a big, solid card so I actually thought for a second it was a wedding invitation - Mom had told me Jen and Sarah were planning on getting married within the next year, so it wasn't out of the question. Instead it was a wedding card (plus check, also made out to Billy and I with a hyphenated last name - mine first, incidentally ;-) and a lovely, long letter from Jen apologizing for not RSVPing for the wedding, thanking me for the follow up letter, and updating me a bit on her life with Sarah.

I'm still grinning about it, and incredibly happy. I added her on Facebook so we'll be able to catch up without resorting to old-fashioned letters again, lol. Hopefully we can have something of a familial relationship, even if its in cyberspace :-)

I've been lax on blogging lately. My bad.

Last week was exciting. Billy was in a short play through school - it counts as a real, professional New York acting credit, which is super exciting. It was at The Players theatre, which happens to count Bill Murray among its members. He was in the building that night for some other event, but ended up wandering in to see the last of the plays (missing Billy's, unfortunately). But we were a bit star struck - it was our first New York celebrity sighting!

Actually, my first celebrity sighting period, unless you count young adult authors as celebrities.

My mom came into town to see Billy's play, which was excellent (both the play and Mom coming in). Poor thing got soooooooooooooooo overwhelmed with all the options of how to get from the Newark airport into the city that she finally just paid an extra $20 and hopped on the shuttle bus to deposit her just a few blocks north of where I work. So on Monday night we went out for dinner then saw Billy's show, and then on Tuesday she took one of those double decker bus tours, which had a stop in Flatiron, so we met for lunch when the tour bus swung through and then met again after work for dinner at Bluesmoke and shopping at Macy's (the Macy's). Then I got her back on her bus and sent her home. It was a short trip but fun - she'll be back with my dad over Labor Day weekend (Mom's been out here three times already in the past year and Dad hasn't been once).

Rest of the week was uneventful until Sunday when my awesome friend from college, Emily, took the train into the city to hang out with me. OMG, there are no words for how great it was to see a familiar face again. I was hardly the social butterfly back in Ypsi, but at the very least I could always chill in the forensics room to see people. Here in New York there's not even a handful of people I know socially, and thanks to us all being adults with jobs we have to plan ahead all of our get together. So Emily and I got brunch in the village, did some shopping and wandering, and got cupcakes at the famous Magnolia bakery. SUPER FUN TIMES.

Oh, last week I also attended a seminar panel on getting a media job. I figured for $25 bucks it couldn't hurt to check it out. One of the panelists was actually a children's book editor at Viking, so I figured at the very least I'd get some useful tips out of her. Overall they didn't tell me anything earth shattering - most of it I'd heard before. But they did encourage us all to really think about all the people we know and said that dropping an old acquaintance an e-mail to say we were job hunting couldn't hurt us. So I e-mailed a handful of people, including the woman at Perseus who interviewed me back in October and Sharyn November, another editor at Penguin who I met at ALA way back in 2002, and BOTH of them responded saying they were passing on my resume: at Perseus an editorial assistant position just opened up, at now my resume is on file at the Penguin HR office. It's such a boost to my confidence to know that there are a couple of people out here who are willing, in some small way, to vouch for me as a potential employee.

Work yesterday and today was extremely chill. One of my bosses is in Tennessee until Thursday so it's just me and John, who's super laid back. He told me to go home an hour early yesterday (but still put regular hours on my time sheet) and today he felt bad for actually making me work, so he bought me lunch. I have absolutely no problem doing tedious work at work - it's actually more exciting than my fall back inventory project - but John always feels super guilty about it so he buys me lunch. Not that I'm complaining ;-)

It's a slow day in the office, and no one else is here at the moment, so I figured messing around on IJ is a legitimate use of my time :-)

Update on Epic Gas WTF 2009: Twitter/Facebook followers know that the gas company showed up mere minutes before Billy had to leave for rehearsal on Wednesday. And then proceeded to tell Billy that the stove/oven was still broken (it was unclear where the leak was actually coming from still). When I got home I asked the super to look at it, and he determined the regulator was broken. So the stove guy came by yesterday (allegedly - I had to leave my key with the super because Billy has class all day Thursday), but didn't have the right part. Hopefully he comes by today with the right one because I'm tired of not being able to cook (we had a huge batch of groceries delivered on Monday and I don't want my veggies to go bad!). Luckily, my boss took pity on my yesterday and gave me $20 so Billy and I could order pizza for dinner, rather than repeating the balogna sandwich dinner of Wednesday evening.

COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF MY TIME AT BANANA REPUBLIC: Got my schedule for my last week and it doesn't completely suck! 11:15-6:45 on Sunday, then the usual 6-10 Monday and Thursday. And then I'll volunteer for a short shift on Saturday because it's holiday pay and it's not like I have any other plans for the 4th. Only working a morning shift though - not a chance in hell I'm volunteering to close on my last day.

Computer update: Computer started acting extremely wonky last week - clearly had a virus, the type that doesn't let you open up Spybot or Malware Bytes. Downloaded AdAware which would run, but never cleaned out the virus for very long. Bought Norton AntiVirus, which did better, but there was also one pesky program that would never leave. And then sometime overnight Wednesday my computer froze and whenever I tried to restart it on Thursday it would go to blue screen of death immediately after I booted it up. And Safe Mode wasn't an option - I can't remember the last time I actually got safe mode to work on my computer.

So Thursday after work I selected the non-destructive recovery option on the computer and reinstalled the whole OS while all of my files were saved on another part of the drive. Woke up early this morning to start fiddling with settings and the like - running my antivirus program again (since whatever virus I had was probably backed up with my files), messing around with Google Chrome (really, really love the concept of the browser. Hate that they don't have an efficient adblocker, so I'm sticking with Firefox for awhile longer). As of 9:00 am this morning, the computer was looking good - Norton had found a virus during its quick scan and got rid of it with no problem. Still can't run Safe Mode, though, which troubles me and probably signals that before too long I'll have to replace the computer. Can't afford to buy a whole new machine right now, though I'm hoping to get a Netbook soon for writing (and free wifi over in Madison Square Park intrigues me), or perhaps I'll hold off until the fall to see what these Android-powered smartbooks are like.

I officially gave my notice at Banana last night! July 4th is my last day of working there (for now - I'm leaving open the possibility of working there during the holidays ~sigh~)

But anyway! Three more weeks! And then I'll finally start having time for myself (and Billy) again!

Seriously. Part of the reason I chose to keep the Banana job after I got my new one was because Banana had been in the habit of scheduling me for 1-2 days a week, when I was available for 7 days. So I figure if I chop down my available days by at least half, they'll still be only scheduling me for 1-2 days a week.

Last week I was scheduled 21 hours; this week it was 12 (because I had explicitly requested Sunday off to regain some sanity) - next week I'm back up to 20: 6 hours on Sunday, then 4 hours each on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. That's essentially using every single hour that I'm available.

The upside of this is that it's finally kicking me into gear to get a savings account set up this weekend. I talked about it with Billy and we decided that once I've paid off my credit card bill and we've saved 2-3 months worth of rent and utilities, we'll feel comfortable enough for me to be OUT of Banana. If they keep scheduling me like crazy, that day will come sooner rather than later.

Also what is helping: I've started using Mint to keep track of our spending and have discovered some shocking things - like how much money we spend on eating out every month. It shouldn't really be surprising, since I've been buying my lunch at work every day for a month, but most of the time lunch is a bagel with cream cheese from Dunkin' Donuts and a Coke picked up from a hot dog vendor. Those $2-3 lunches add up. So Billy and I are going to renew our efforts to pack our lunches and eat dinners at home, and maybe limit going out to once per week.

We're also going to drop cable TV. ~gasp~ But seriously, we spend $85-95 a month on our cable/internet package (depending on if we buy a pay-per-view movie) - only $30 of that is internet. We don't watch $55+ of TV a month. The only reason we were hesitating was because we do like to watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on nights when I'm actually home - but I just checked and both of them put their shows online. So we're doing it! We're going TV-less! And then we'll finally have enough money to renew our Netflix account!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who knew I could get so excited about saving money?

But the "fuck you" to Banana Republic still stands.

So that schedule for next week finally showed up.

I'm allegedly working from 9:45 to 6:45 on Sunday, then 6 to 10 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Considering working six hours on Sunday this week and then 6 to 10 on Wednesday and Thursday wiped me out this week, I'm totally NOT working all of those hours this week.

I know that in some ways I'm an incredibly lucky person - there are so many people right now that would kill for one job, let alone two. On the other hand, BECAUSE I have two jobs, I would prefer that I not be scheduled for the maximum number of hours at my second job, and instead those hours go to someone that truly needs them. If I could go from working almost 20 hours a week to something closer to 20 hours a month there, I would be extremely happy.

So our new scheduling agreement at work supposedly guarantees that we will have our schedule for the next week by Thursday at noon, at the latest. Not that I've EVER seen it then, but we at least usually get it on Thursday, posted at the store and/or e-mailed to us.

Well, I left the store at 10 last night, nothing posted - it's now quarter to nine the next morning and there's still no e-mail.

So I decided to check my spam folder, just to make sure it hadn't ended up in there.

While in the spam folder, I discovered that I had been sent 140+ spam e-mails on Wednesday, all with almost identical subjects (some spam genius has decided to start modeling spam messages on mailer daemon failed delivery messages).

Thank god for Gmail's spam filter.

Not thanking god for Banana Republic. I am super tired and achy and rather upset that I didn't find out until Wednesday that we were going to be open Easter Sunday, and now it's Good Friday and we still don't have our schedules (despite the brand new scheduling agreement they were so eager for me to sign last month - does this mean I don't have to hold up my end of the bargain on giving proper notice for calling in sick?). I'm not celebrating Easter, and haven't for a long time, but what if I was? It's the principle of the thing.

Worked another 12+ hour day yesterday, thanks to my unholy combination of jobs. I am SO TIRED right now. And I blame Billy - if he hadn't had a full pork chop dinner waiting for me when I got home, I would have been asleep an hour earlier.

But it was very sweet for him to make me dinner, so I'll forgive him.

Tonight I do the same thing, though hopefully I'll get out of work on time rather than at 10:30. If there's a perfect close tonight I might hurt someone - at least if they put me back in the sale section alone again.

At some point Billy and I are going to have a conversation about whether it's really worth it for me to keep working both jobs. We could certainly use the money, but it's also driving me up a freaking wall.

Dear economy: please get better soon so I can NOT be underemployed for once in my life. I think that would be a wonderful feeling.

So, almost two months ago I started my new job. And shortly after starting this job I tried to quit at Banana Republic, because originally I was told the only way I could stay on the schedule there and not work Monday-Friday was to leave my Saturday and Sunday completely open. Which led to working 13 days straight when I returned to work after the wedding. Not cool.

So I talked to my manager and told him I was going to have to quit because this shit was bananas. Because my manager loves me, he didn't want me to quit so we worked out an alternative: I take Saturdays off, leave my Sundays free, and then set my availability for three four hour shifts at night during the week, say from six until ten. Since the last shift currently ends at nine and they aren't scheduling shifts shorter than four hours, I'll still be on the schedule and technically fulfilling my availability requirements, but I won't have to worry about being scheduled until summer.

I guess by "summer" he meant "April 2nd" because on Thursday I'm working from 6 until 10. After working from 10-5:30 at the real job.

If the stores hours have changed, I really might have to quit for real, because I don't think my sanity can handle 12+ hour days.

The wedding is in less than seven days at this point. At this time next Saturday, I will have been married for four hours, and looking forward to wrapping up the party so I can start that fabled wedding night ;-)

The disaster with the extra charges is being worked out. The gratuity would be more like $700 vs the $1200 I was calculating, and instead of making us pay for the minimum 100 guests, we'll only have to pay what our final guest count says (which is going to be in the 85-90 range), so the difference works out to us paying just about what we originally owed. Billy and I are fine with that, especially since, according to my mom, the wedding coordinator is totally recognizing that she's inconveniencing us and this is the millionth screw up she's had to deal with in the transition from the original coordinator to her.

I'm still not recommending anyone else have their reception at this hotel. Even though they've made good on all of their mistakes, this is still way more shit than any person should have to deal with leading up to the wedding day.

Work all day at Banana Republic tomorrow, ugh. I have a feeling I'm not going to stick with that job much longer - my "real" job spoils me too much by giving me paid lunch hours and letting me go home early on a Friday afternoon when there was nothing else to do (yet letting me put down my full hours on the time sheet). Then Monday and Tuesday at the new job, and Wednesday I fly back to Holland!

And...happy Valentine's day, everyone. Not that Billy and I hold the day in any high esteem, lol. I think the most elaborate Valentine's we've ever done was the one that was actually a week before we started dating, when he constructed this awesome "claw machine" out of random stuff from a late night Meijer run (Billy had a slight claw machine addiction early on in our friendship). Since then we've always just waited a week to do romantic crap so we didn't have to deal with the Valentine crowds.

Tonight we did get ice cream, though. It's been months since I've had Cold Stone, so this seemed like a good time to do it. Going to restrict myself to eating really healthy food this week - I can't crash diet because my mother would kill me if I lost (or gained) enough weight to require altering my wedding gown, but I can make sure that I hold steady so I look fabulous in one week.

Because let me just say it one more time, I'M GETTING MARRIED IN A WEEK.

So last night I braved the bitter cold to attend the CW Post open house.

Yeah, I'm not going there.

The awesome dual-degree program is designed for people who want to be subject specialist academic librarians, which is pretty far from what I actually want to do. While it's awesome that I wouldn't have to take the GRE, and would get a discount on the cost per credit hour thanks to my undergrad GPA, it's way too expensive considering they don't have a program that focuses on what I actually want to do. Not that I really know what that is, but I think the Queens College library science program, with a certificate in children's and young adult services is a lot closer.

My dream school (around here, anyway) would be to go to NYU Steinhardt and get my masters in Media, Culture and Communication (with a concentration in cultural and visual studies), but after that I really feel like my only option is to stay in academia. Which is where I would love to end up, because I'm a huge nerd, but I don't know if trying for that makes financial sense right now. At least with an MLS, there's a specific job connected with that one - still have to work my ass off to find it and get it, but you can look at the degree and see exactly what my education qualifies me for. With an English bachelor's and a Media Studie's master's...well, what the hell do you do next?

Billy says I need to stop being so practical and just do what I want. But I'm really tired of scraping the bottom of the barrel for money and it would be nice to have the knowledge that at the end of school there would be real opportunities for me to find an awesome professional job.

RSVPs continue to come in, slowly but surely. Yesterday I started calling people from college - only talked to two of the dozen people I called, so :-P on that one. But the two people I talked to are coming, so that makes me excited. At this point it looks like we're going to have a full house (so please dear god single people - don't bring a date. There will not be seats for them).

In other exciting news - I got the job I interviewed for last week and this week! Going to start ASAP - need to go to Banana Republic today or tomorrow and change my availability so I'll only work there on Saturdays and Sundays.

Which could end up being dropped if I decide to enroll in classes here. It's kind of a fugly website, lol, but it sounds like a cool program: earn two masters degrees simultaneously, one in Library Information Science from Long Island University, and then a masters in pretty much whatever else I want from NYU. Of course, NYU doesn't have what I really want, which is some sort of comparative media studies degree, but I think I'd live. There's an open house on Wednesday which I'm going to check out when I get out of work.

...Yeah, that's all I've got. Billy's sick :-( I'm really, really hoping I can somehow avoid it. Or I want it to hit me full force tomorrow so I can get through it well before the wedding. Well, not too far before, since the whole thing happens in three weeks (lol, I mentioned that at work last night and everyone was like "Three weeks?! YOU'RE SO CALM." Which is clearly not true if you get a good look at my face - hello three zits that have popped up in the last week.)

Had my second interview with American Book Company today. Lasted twice as long as the first one, lol, with a lot more substance about the job. There's a possibility this could become a full time position, which would be sweet (though if I get it I could be working as much as 35 hours a week, so it doesn't sound like it'd be a huge difference).

I find out...sometime soon whether I get it or not. They said Thursday or Friday, but considering one person was leaving to go out of town for a few days, I'm really not sure if that's this Thursday/Friday or next Thursday/Friday.

Received five more RSVPs today. Slowly but surely they're still trickling in. Maybe I'll hold off until next week to frantically call people?

In the mean time, off to request the 2009 ALA's youth media award winners from the library. Looking over the list, the only honorees I've read were three of the Printz honorees - Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which was definitely one of my favorite books of 2008, Nation and Tender Morsels. I read the book that came before Octavian Nothing and was unimpressed, so I think I'm going to leave the sequel off my list. I've also read all of Laurie Halse Anderson's work (because what woman of my generation hasn't?), so it's exciting to see her win the Edwards award. I wasn't a huge fan of Chains (it's good, I'll definitely read the sequel, but I don't think it was her strongest work), but I absolutely can't wait to get my hands on her next book, Wintergirls.

So I sent in my resume for a job posting on Monday, and at 9:41 last night I got an e-mail asking me to come in at 1:30 today for an interview. However, since last night was the premier of Lost and was followed by Very Important Couple time, I didn't actually see the e-mail until ten this morning.

But I went to the interview. It lasted all of 15 minutes - I showed up at quarter after one and was out on the street calling Billy at 1:31.

I have no idea how this one actually went. The interviewer spent most of the time talking. She asked me to demonstrate some basic skills in Excel which I kind of fumbled through (they weren't the things that I usually do in Excel). I'm supposed to find out the week after next about the job.

If I don't get it, it's not a big thing since it's not what I actually want to do - it's working as a showroom assistant for American Book Company, so it's something related to publishing, but it's still a part-time just-barely-better-than-retail (at least in terms of pay) job.

In the meantime, clearly 90% of our RSVPs were lost in the mail or something. Which is mildly ridiculous. I received one today, from my flaky aunt out in Minnesota. But apparently she's coming to the wedding - with her less-than-savory husband. But my aunt will be there!

Now I suppose I need to contact her kids and see if they want to come, lol.

I think I'm going to start calling people on Monday about the RSVPs. It's a pain in the ass, especially if most of these people actually did the right thing and sent in the cards, but I still need to know one way or another so I can give a final headcount to the food people and put together seating assignments.

I am (getting?) sick.

I was originally supposed to have today off from work, but then I volunteered to take four hours of someone else's shift today (because, yay money, and it was only four hours). Billy wasn't too happy, but I figured, oh well. It was only four hours.

And then today I woke up sounding like I've been smoking a pack a day for ten years. I went out and got a hot chocolate - no help. Then I tried gargling warm salt water (which is almost always a cure for my froggy throats). No dice. I sound as terrible as ever.

I'm coughing intermittently, but I really hope that's just my body trying to kick the crap out of my throat. I was working as greeter in the store yesterday, so I'm hoping I just overtaxed my poor throat and everything will be fine by tomorrow morning when I have to go back to work.

Every other post on my flist is about people finishing their exams. I MISS HAVING EXAMS. All I have to look forward to now is working for more than a week without a day off (which is, granted, my own fault: I volunteered to take four hours of someone's shift on Sunday. But that's four hours where I'll be getting paid, rather than being tempted to spend money, and money is something we need pretty desperately right now).

Life is nothing but work and reading right now. Wedding invitations are on hiatus until I can actually get ahold of my mother again and just confirm some details over the ceremony time. Also I would like to confirm the time with our officiant, who I haven't heard from since I met with her in August. I e-mailed her on Wednesday and haven't heard back yet, which is rather worrisome, because she's always been very prompt before. I'm going to e-mail her again tonight or tomorrow, and then I'm calling her on Monday. I am days away from freaking out, OMG.

I set up that book blog I was talking about earlier this week. It's over on Blogger (I hate signing in and out of journal services, hence why it's not on IJ): Bookish Blather. So far it only has one review, but whatever, I've been busy. I'm not going to cross-post here on a regular basis, 'cause that's too much for me to remember, but if I read another life-changing book like Hunger Games, then I'll make some sort of post here linking to it.

Billy has an internet radio station on. It's apparently playing The Worf Song (a corollary to the badass Picard Song). I like it.

And now I'm going to go finish making dinner. Mm, food.

Remember my book problem?

Well, I may have discovered why the library puts a limit on holds. Because without them, I'm sure days like today where I go in and pick up eight books would be a lot more common.

Granted, eight books at a time used to be nothing for me. I would stagger out of my middle school library with at least that many, easily, never mind in the summer in high school when I did BBYA. By then I was using my car to transport my books, so I wasn't limited by pesky things like a weight limit (back in the day I walked to/from school, which could make carrying a billion books painful on my poor little shoulders).

So now I have a fair-sized stack of books I need to get through within the next three weeks (on top of more books that are arriving any day now, and finishing up those damn wedding invitations. I know I keep talking about them, but I'm a terrible procrastinator and thus haven't made much real progress). What to start with first?

• Exodus (after re-reading the synopsis, I think I might want to hold onto this and read it at the same time that Nation comes in. Sounds like they might be good companion books)
  
• The World is Flat (been wanting to read this one for ages)
  
• Audrey Wait
  
• Unraveling
  
• Little Brother
  
• The Terror Dream
  
• Living Dead Girl
  
• Ashes of Roses (read this back in high school and remember loving it then. I'm holding on to this until I get Margaret Peterson Haddix's new book Uprising)
  

And now I need to go get dressed, and actually pick a book to read so I won't be bored to tears on the subway and on my break at work

Today
9:45-3:45 Work (hopefully there won't be any babies screaming in my face today)
4-5 Pick up the pumpkin pie for tomorrow (I originally scheduled the pick up for five. I'm hoping they'll have it ready early. If they don't, I might buy a new blouse or pair of pants at work)
Whenever I get home from work: Put pie in fridge, gather up library books to return, hit the library and the grocery store for last minute necessities (ie, whipped cream for aforementioned pumpkin pie)
This evening: Work on invitations, prep work for tomorrow's feast (make orzo for orzotto, chop up veggies so they just have to be thrown in the oven, take cornish game hen(s?) out of the freezer to defrost...put together a cooking schedule so some things won't be finished ridiculously early

Tomorrow
4-5am Harass Billy to make him go with me to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It's our first national holiday in New York - we are still touristy enough that we can get away with going to see this without being made fun of (too much) by hardcore New Yorkers
Sometime later: Cook a feast and eat it! OM NOM NOM

Friday
Sleep off food hangover (I don't think you could pay me to go shopping)
6-midnight Work, boo.

Saturday
Wake up obnoxiously early to do my shopping today! (Michael's is having some ridiculous deals, and I could use some more wedding supplies)
2:15-8:15 More work

Busy week, especially with work, but the paycheck I get in two weeks will be nice. If only I was getting it before my mom left :-( I officially got the 7th-9th off of work, so I'll be able to spend the whole time with Mom, but since most of today's paycheck needs to go towards paying rent I won't be able to pay for a lot of fabulous stuff :-( :-(

But I'll be able to try on the "rough draft" of my wedding dress while she's here, so that will be AWESOME.

Heard back from the job-hiring-person again. Her boss has asked her to wait until the first week of December to make an offer. She says she hopes they have good news for me...grah, the waiting is killing me!!!

On the upside, it appears I won't be hurting too much for money waiting to hear about this job. Here's my schedule for next week:

Sunday: Off (thank goodness)
Monday: 12:30 pm-9:30 pm (aw, missing Heroes :-( )
Tuesday: 6:30 pm-11 pm
Wednesday: 9:45 am-3:45 pm (goddammit, it's not cool to make me stay that late and then ask me to come in again less than 12 hours later. NOT COOL)
Thursday: Off (yay Thanksgiving)
Friday: 6 pm-12 am (boo, hiss)
Saturday: 2:15-8:15 (I can handle that. I knew the Saturdays-off thing would have to end sometime)