One Abnormal Girl

I swear I’m going to stop reading http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com long enough to post this.

The new job is still entirely tolerable.  This is the first job where I have a title (even if it has “assistant” at the end) and an office and a pay grade that actually covers my bills with a bit extra to keep me from panicking once a month.  This is also the first job to make me feel like I actually need my intellect to do it.  It doesn’t require any knowledge of anthropology or linguistics, no, but at least I don’t feel like I could replace myself with a well-trained monkey.  I have responsibilities and projects and I play an identifiable role in the university.  It’s not what I’ve been dreaming of, but it’s a lot of what I’ve been wanting.  It’s a lot of what I used to hear about and envy, even if it was small things like having personal business cards, or an office (however small), or desk supplies that I requested myself, or an absolute need for Microsoft Outlook.  It’s also permanent, and starting in April there will be benefits.  I am grateful.

I’m also in a position now to sleep in the bed of my choosing.  When I decided to make the move to the west coast, I was actually a bit excited at the prospect of having to build up my furniture collection from scratch, with a design in mind.  Having to go the cheap route for my furniture purchases, I haven’t been able to keep with that aesthetic at all, but at least I might have a platform bed with a Japanese futon.  I’m in the process of purchasing that, but now I need to figure out what to do with the king-sized bed that a family friend generously donated to me before I even got here.  I’m glad I’ve had a bed to sleep on for the past 7 months, but it’s awfully hard to get rid of.  Right now there’s a post on craigslist for it.  I’d have given it away if the local Goodwills/Salvation Armies were willing to come get it.

I swear I had more planned for this, but there is a steamed/over-steamed artichoke to be eaten, and I am a slave to artichokes these days.

One last thing, though: I replaced my old Website with a new one.  I might be adding a few more things to it, but right now it’s doable.  I like the simplicity.  Most of the more wordy content is in the blog anyway, and the pictures are all in a gallery (which has also been updated a little), so I’m happy with this.  I ditched the clutter.  I just need to think of a better quote title.  It’s intended to be changed every few days/weeks, I just can’t think of anything since that particular idea settled in my head.  Hmmm.

Finally, I am only just now using this icon by sky_dark.  Mmmm.  Soak it up.

I’d been working a godsend temp job since the very end of September for a little over a month, wishing I was permanent but kind of relieved it wasn’t when I got called in for an interview at a liberal arts university where I’d applied almost two months prior (possibly longer). Despite feeling pretty qualified, I was nervous enough that I didn’t think the interview went very well at all, and then I didn’t hear back from them for over a week past the date they’d hoped would be their decision deadline. I was pretty disappointed because I really thought I’d enjoy the role and it was at a university and I think I need to be in that kind of atmosphere to be happy, and the temp job was far from it, though overall a very good job especially given the state of things to come.

But then on Monday I got a call back, and I got the job! It’s just pending a few things that I don’t expect to be a problem. I should be starting on the 8th, which is my mom’s birthday.

The salary is a bit more than I’m making now, which gives me room to budget, and maybe even open a savings account someday. But most importantly, after 3 months I’ll be back on medical insurance, which I haven’t had since college. This will be my first job with benefits. It feels like a huge step forward for me, and even though it’s still not anthropology or linguistics, it’s still something I enjoy (computer software) in an academic atmosphere, which is as close as I’m going to get right now and there’s still room for me to do my own research on my own time thanks to the library. But it is a new position and I haven’t started yet, so who knows what I’ll really end up doing, but this is a particularly good opportunity for me and I’m pretty excited about the potential.

Plus benefits. :D Mm benefits.

So I totally finished my yaoi-con post.  It’s here if you wanted to see it finished.  It’s all out of order and haphazard, though.

In recent news, we have a router for the second time, because the first one we bought was the wrong thing, har har.  And although this one is actually the router we needed, I’m not sure it’s very good at all.  It seems to like dropping the connection intermittently, which hardly affects something like Internet browsing, but makes WoW all but impossible.  Or maybe it’s not the router, maybe it’s the Internet itself, but I’ve never had external problems with the Internet actually result in a message on the computer saying the cable is unplugged.  It might be going back.  Apparently my old one must not have been so awful: it actually worked solidly and steadily up until its burnout.

Also I can’t stop listening to Dr. Horrible and Muse, and I’m amused that the combination of those two names/titles results in Dr. House, whom I’ve been catching up on by ninja-ing the eps onto my iPod.  Somehow the laptop just isn’t portable enough.  And I can finally also put videos onto my phone now that I have the creepily tiny 2GB card for it, but then it would just be too small.  But it’s pretty sweet that I can still do it if I want to.   I just wish the BlackBerry could decode the same files I put on the iPod, then I’d only have to encode the file once.

Job’s going well.  It lacks many of the perks that seem commonplace these days, and it’s still temp work (no benefits), but at least I don’t really notice the passage of time.  Besides, waterjets and lasers are cool, even if I don’t work with them directly.  Best of all, I get paid.