Right now I'm paying about $15/mth for 20 channels, only 6 of which are watchable. Lately I can't even be bothered to watch the few programs I follow on TV; I catch up on them online during the weekend. My TV exists to display DVDs and for gaming.

The question then becomes, do I get cable back again for the World Cup this summer? In order to get the games, I'd have to subscribe to the 2nd tier of programming which is $50/mth. *gag* What worries me is I'd be so enamoured of having History, Discovery, National Geographic and Travel channels (also only available with the 2nd tier) back again that I wouldn't watch the Cup and I wouldn't be able to bear turning cable off again when the Cup is over.

Why can't cable companies just let you pick the channels you want and prorate your bill accordingly?

It's looking like we might have a white Christmas; winter decided to arrive this weekend. Of course, just in time for the only road trip I've had in months! I drove home through snow all day yesterday, and this morning it's -11 deg (F. That's about -24 for the C people.) After being neck deep in snow all last winter (and more snow in June!) I'm really not enjoying the idea this year.

300mls from home waiting for a concert to start and not really feeling too excited to be here. I'm more excited that they have free wifi, music I like, and at least 1 big screen tv playing something other than American football. I haven't been able to watch hockey in years. So far the score is Boston 4 Toronto 0 and there were 2 fights that I saw. Ahh hockey!

In my last post I mentioned him as the reason I last cried. He was my cat, I was his human, and he died in 2001 at the age of 12. I don't suppose I'll ever love another human the way I loved Indy.

Spooky, my diabetic boy, is Indy's younger brother.

They were born 10 yrs apart, and Spooky is now 10 yrs old. I'll soon have to face losing my last connection to Indy. Don't get me wrong, I love Spooky in his own right, but I can't ignore the fact that he's Indy's brother.

Indy


Only a couple of weeks old with his sister Uhura. Yes, we tend to name our cats after movie and TV characters.


He was very photogenic. He always gazed into the camera and never flinched at the flash.


He loved the hell out of this scratching post! They didn't make tall ones, or even kitty condos in those days. I dug around the sheds and found some scrap wood and we had some carpet remnants laying around. I recovered this post 3 or 4 times in his lifetime.


Admittedly, this is a loveseat, not a full couch, but he wasn't a small cat.

Livejournal isn't cutting for me today...

Finish the sentence...

1. My ex.... moved back to Poland.

2. Maybe I should.... throw away about 1/2 of what I own.

3. I love.... my cats

4. People would say that.... I'm a geek.

5. I don't understand.... why people just can't get along.

6. When I wake up in the morning.... it's time for Spooky's shot.

8. Life is full of.... stupid people who waste your time and ruin your day.

9. My past taught me.... you can't trust anybody.

10. I get annoyed when.... I end up in queue behind the person who picked out the only item without a price tag.

11. Parties are.... to be avoided. (Samtyr is so wise!)

12. I wish.... I was still on severance.

13. Dogs.... are not for me.

14. Cats.... are the perfect companion.

15. Tomorrow is.... the day I head out to see a Soul Asylum concert at the other end of the state.

16. I have a low tolerance for.... bright sunlight and heat.

17. If I had a million dollars....I'd spend the next few years wandering Europe.

18. I'm totally terrified of.... dentists.

19. My last kiss.... was icky as it was from the brother of my friend so that puts him in the same category as MY brother. YUCK!

20. I am listening to.... Galactic Watercooler Podcast.

21. I talk.... to myself and if I'm caught I tell them my iPod headphones are handsfree.

22. My best friend.... had a stroke 4 yrs ago.

23. My first REAL kiss.... was from Walt.

24. Love is.... spending $500/mth on your cat with bladder blockage problems instead of just putting him to sleep. (Not me, but a friend of mine.)

25. Marriage is.... legalised slavery.

26. Somewhere, someone is thinking.... it's time for tea!

27. I'll always.... pick even a bad scifi movie over a romance.

28. The last time I really cried was because.... I finally developed some pictures of Indy that I took 20yrs ago.

29. My cell phone is/was.... not on.

30. Before I go to bed.... I charge my iTouch so I can read Harry Potter fan fiction til I fall asleep.

31. Right now I am thinking about.... whether my iTouch is done charging.

32. Babies are.... horrid, filthy little trolls.

33. Today I.... started to crochet a new tablecloth.

34. Tomorrow I will be.... on the road to see Soul Asylum!

35. I really want to be.... in London!

36. Someone that will most likely re-post this is.... nobody, cuz I got it from Samtyr and she's the only one who reads my journal! :)

Yesterday my Mom and Dad brought me my Grandma's kitchen table.



It's getting chillier here in North Dakota so I decided I need a tablecloth to protect my uncouth elbows from the cold wood when I rest them on the table! The pattern is called To the Lighthouse and is from a Decorative Crochet magazine (or is it Magic Crochet? So tragic they both quit publishing!) It originally called for size 30 or 40 thread and was supposed to be something like 17 inches across. But look what happens when you use 10 instead - you get a 4 foot tablecloth! Yay!

Oh Dear God

I can't believe how slow some people are. At 7:30am we were given 5 worksheets to complete. I finished by 9am, annoyed at myself for how long I took. By lunch at 11:30am there were still people doing the worksheets!

Yes, I'm 3 days into training for the new job and bored to tears! Really people, do you need half the day for 1 worksheet and 2 reviews? I finished all 3 in about 20 min and spent the rest of the afternoon making a small doily.

Yesterday I took the legs off the table I use as a desk and reassembled it in the 2nd bedroom. Then I had to put together my office chair which I got at Staples for about $150. I know the chair looks like it completely dwarfs the table, but they're actually the right heights to be ergonomically complimentary.



Unfortunately, the 2nd bedroom doesn't have a phone jack or cable jack, so I'm going to have to run a phone line from the master bedroom and an internet cable from the living room. Lucky for me, a previous tenant already drilled holes in the walls for just those purposes!

Now I just have to wait for my computer and phone to be shipped to me.

I've had a very frustrating week. On top of my online application which had my resume attached, on Monday my new employer emailed me an application to print, fill out, and fax back.

Why? It's just going to be all the same information they already have in two different forms: online application, resume.

The only difference is they want business details for my references: business name and phone number. I suppose they figure my references should be employed and it's easier to contact them during business hours with their business phone number.

Problem is, I've only ever needed two references before, and they want three. Not much of a problem since I have two other people who've in the past said it's OK to use them, but now those two spares seem to have disappeared on me! I left a voicemail for the first on Tuesday and gave up on her yesterday. I emailed the second spare yesterday and she's usually pretty quick with the emails. Here it is nearly 24 hrs after emailing my second spare and she hasn't replied.

How good does this look that I can't get an application back to my new employer within 5 days because I can't find a mere 3rd reference???

UPDATE: My 2nd spare reference finally contacted me back and I've now faxed all the forms back to my new employer! *whew*

*Finally*  Well, not that I've been trying too hard so far.  :)

I went to a job fair on Monday for a company that does business travel. I got an email on Tuesday asking if a Thursday phone interview would work for me. I had the interview at 9:30a yesterday and they emailed me an offer at 11:30a, less than 2hrs after the interview ended! Wow! I'll be making only $1 per hour less than my last job.

My last severance check is 06Nov and my first day on the new job is 16Nov. What nice timing. I'll be working from home so I need to get a 2nd phone line installed that the company will then take over and dedicate to their phone system. They'll send me a computer and phone and I just need to set up a quiet corner in a room where I can close the door and keep out the cats. Thank God I insisted on getting a 2 bedroom apartment when I moved into town 4 yrs ago. The 2nd bedroom has served as storage room so I need to do some serious organising in there!

Today is the first day in a week the temperature rose above freezing! Yay!

Every morning I wake up to a dusting of snow. Thank God the ground hasn't frozen yet and the sun is still strong enough that the snow melts before noon. But this doesn't bode well for the rest of the winter.

( Job notes: )

Here's how it works:
• Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

( My assigned questions:  )

Yep, summer is definitely over, and somehow I don't think we're getting an autumn this year.

It was off-and-on blizzarding today with 30mph winds. It's now 20 deg F (about -7C) and just as windy. I need to schedule for new tires, which reminds me of a new regulation I only learned of recently.

If you own a front-wheel-drive vehicle and wish to purchase just 2 new tires, put them on the front (where all the power is, duh) and the best 2 of the old tires on the back, you must now sign a release form stating this is how you requested the tires to be put on. Why? Because some time in the past, some broad got new tires on the front, then fell asleep driving home, woke up in a skid, over corrected and spun out, ending up with a broken neck. Her lawyer successfully argued that if the new tires had been on the back, there would have been less chance of an uncontrollable tailspin. This so reminds me of the person who sued McDonalds because their coffee was hot.

First of all, don't fall asleep driving you idiot. Also, learn how to drive your front-wheel-drive vehicle. I don't care how good your back tires are, if you skid at highway speeds and don't know how to come out of it, you'll tail spin no matter what kind of tires you have. Now I'm going to have to sign that stupid release form just so my mechanic can cover his ass.

Back on June 6 we had a blizzard in North Dakota. As I said in that post, it's never snowed that late into the spring in my lifetime.

Here we go again! We're under a winter weather watch for the next 2 days.

I broke down today and drove the 100mls to the nearest Target and bought a Touch. No, I haven't yet received my refund from Apple for the one stolen on Tuesday (stupid FedEx!)

I have an obsessive need to be able to charge anything anywhere, so for my iPod Classic I have both a car charger and an AC charger. I figured I could charge the Touch in the car during the long drive home and it would be ready to hot sync right away. Ummm, no. Apple felt the need to change the power port. It's still configured the same so the car charger popped right in without a problem, but soon I got a message that charging was not possible with this device. Damn... Now I'll need to invest in a whole new army of chargers. *grumble*

What am I to do with the old iPod? I decided to delete all the podcasts and audiobooks and load it up with just music. I have an iPod boom box I keep in the bedroom and I will now keep the old iPod permanently docked there as my stereo. So, I deleted all the podcasts and audiobooks from iTunes and shuffled things around in playlists and synced for what I thought would be the last time. Huh. That left me with only 11 gigs of music. Well, I can't have an iPod that's mostly empty! So I started adding more files... and more files... and more files... I even put Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson on and gave them their own playlist called Scary!  :)

I now have 14 gigs on the old iPod and I just don't have any other music I'd like to put on it. So that will have to be good enough. Now I'll download the latest iTunes and start charging the new Touch! A little excited here!

My Palm Pilot, on which I read all my fan fiction, is starting to show its age and not working so well. My iPod is so old I don't remember anymore when I bought it. Its 30 gig hard drive was top of the line at the time. Palm no longer even sells handheld devices, just smart phones. So I made a scary decision to replace both my addictive hardware devices with one device and decided to buy an iPod Touch.

( First I drove to my local Wal-Mart... )

Jeez, I haven't had to do this for 11 years. It's just as horrible as it was before.

Last Wednesday I had an interview with Aflac. They're a supplemental insurance company. Basically, if someone with a policy becomes hurt or sick and unable to work, Aflac works as a paycheck for them. But pay is 100% commission based. Apparently the average income is $50K but I just don't see it as a job that would reliably pay the rent. One month you may make quite a lot, but then you most likely would have many months, probably in a row, where you'd sell no policies and have no income. No, I need a guaranteed monthly income.

On Friday I interviewed for an assistant human resources position. I thought it went very well, but I know the human resources manager from my previous office also applied so I don't hold out much hope there either.

Today is my birthday so I decided to just relax and enjoy the day. But this afternoon I received an email rejection for a job I really wanted and thought I was guaranteed to get. "We have decided to pursue other candidates who more closely match the required skills and qualifications." Really? If you can find anyone more closely matched than me I'd really like to meet them!

Happy Birthday to me....

I went to visit my brother in Minneapolis last weekend and he took me to the Irish Fair on Saturday.

( It was miserably stinkin' hot!\ )

I've had these 2 huge moles on my neck since I was old enough to remember. Grandma combed my hair for me sometimes and she managed to scrape the comb over the moles every single time! Certain collars were torture as they rubbed and I've only ever carried my handbag over my left shoulder to avoid the moles. They've been the bane of my life and it's been one of my dreams to get them removed. But various medical fears have always made me think, the devil you know...

I finally took a firm grip on myself and made an appointment which was for yesterday. I figured it would be just a quick inspection, the doctor would agree that yes they needed to be removed, and tell me to make another appointment. Nope, he hustled me into a small surgery, broke out all the scary tools, and took them off right there. I had no time to psych myself up for the trauma! After that I came home and had the shakes almost as bad as after dentist visits.

A few hours later and the numbing agent wore off. Sleeping last night wasn't very comfortable as there is only 1 position possible - lying on my left side. Today I don't dare turn my head much in either direction as the skin around the wounds pulls and causes even more pain. It's going to be a miserable few days while these things heal.

But I console myself that the final scars, which are inevitable, are actually going to look like a vampire bite and that's wicked cool! :D

Yesterday I took my niece and her friend to see Half-Blood Prince. I'd gone with my own friends to the midnight showing Wednesday morning but that wasn't an environment conducive to deep thought. Why are teenagers incapable of just watching a movie without phone calls, texts, and frantic giggling and babbling? And why the move this summer to Wednesday releases? I LIKE Friday releases; it's another reason to look forward to the weekend.

( Quite long and spoilery. Be warned! )