and three cupcakes later...

i thought what am i doing? what am i doing eating three cupcakes and not having a real job? i know...gaining weight and getting poorer and poorer.

yes, it's been a long week and i'm feeling a little down and out.

anyway, i saw this awhile back and thought it was super fun. a different piece of cake for whatever size you need (or rather whatever mood you're in).

is it friday yet?

not exactly sure why but this week seems excrutiatingly long. excrutiatingly i tell you.

i think it has something to do with a little pms which causes me to take a normal situation and somehow completely blow it out of proportion...does this happen to anyone else? but i am a little stressed and worried. which is interesting because the thing that makes me so stressed and worried also makes me excited. excited for change, adventure. i've always been one to not want to get tied up in money and things and here's a perfect opportunity to avoid the ties of lots of money. we can try for very little.

anyway, i'm just trying to keep in all in perspective and not completely freak out this week (and eat too much fast food).

a couple of interesting things. while e was driving the band's van #2 yesterday a random piece of equipment smashed into a rear window...shattering. today i purchased a pad printer, which will allow us to print customized pens, cups, letteropens, stressballs, the list is endless. the hope is this will contribute to our blujones business. so do you need any custom pens?

i'm still working at the plumbing job and it's ok. i'm 99% sure it isn't going to turn into anything permanent...not that i'm not wanted by some but others are just super cheap and i'm apparently a little too costly. those darn skills will cost you everytime. it's a little boring these days and the guys i'm working for are clueless as to what i need to make things work. it's just frustrating to have to continually explain that i need good photos to make this work. anyway, i'm trying to figure out a transition into something else.

today i called about substitute teaching and scheduling an appointment with an advisor at UCO's grad school.

i've settled into the idea that if i don't find a permanent something in the next couple of weeks, i won't find anything until january. the holidays are going to put a kink in my life in many ways. i'll apologize in advance for your cheap, crapy gift.

i think that's enough for now...i had some ramblings going through my head about god, prayer and my life going to pot this month but i think i'll save that for another day.

happy halloween.



(i opted for a yellowish/white pumpkin this year and i think i baffled the cashier at homeland. he kept mentioning the cheaper, orange pumpkins outside and i kept mentioning that i wanted a fun white one. an odd exchange. )

wowza...

just a list...

- someone hacked my ebay account last night and bid and won a crap load of stuff...errr.

- i should be receiving my final paycheck this week...i'm anxious to get it. these people aren't the most ethical folks i've ever met so sadly i don't trust them completely to pay me.

- i'm fairly stressed about the job situation today...i'm chalking it up to a case of pms.

- i've been walking and eating a lot this past week...at least they're a team.

- i found out this weekend that my personal hell likely involves drunks and country music in one place.

- i'm super tired today.

- i heart ginger thins.

just another skeleton...

i'm pretty sure these videos don't do the event justice but i thought i would share. i also have pictures coming soon.






rumor is they will be playing in okc on new year's eve...for those of you who are interested.

fight the bitterness, bitterness is bad...

tonight i saw one of my old co-workers from the "not so green" engineering, consulting firm. since my departure i've had a spy relay some info to me but for the most part i've heard very little...mostly because the spy got fired a week after me.

well, tonight i heard a story that truly seals the deal...those people are bad. bad, bad people.

so the story goes, when it was announced to the staff that I was no longer with the company it was because I spent hours playing solitaire. seriously, the staff was informed that I wasn't there any longer because I played solitaire too much. this is funny for many reasons.

1. i was told it wasn't me...it was them.
2. i got a severance package
3. i have received a reference letter
4. i never play solitaire. ever. read popsugar sure...solitaire no.
5. who gets fired for playing solitaire?

but i want to know...why would they lie about this? why wouldn't they just tell the truth.

so today i despise them. bitterness abounds. and i want to write them a nasty letter...not because they did this but because they are crappy people. crappy people that made me pray at the company picnic and do jobs for their church.

my friend, who will remain nameless and is mostly very laid-back, has a list. a list of people who do her wrong...and at some point she does something to pay them back. an anonymous gesture to even things up or at least make her feel better.

in one case she purchased a bunch of smutty books and magazines and wrote "this book belongs to (person she doesn't like), please call xxx-xxxx" in each of them. She then distributed them in places like the bus station.

in another case, she mailed a box of live crickets.

so i've been pondering if i could ever do anything like that...and this recent story makes me think yes. i'm looking for ideas.

happy wednesday.

just an okie from muskogee...

i'm spent so i'm not going to stay long. but today i went to muskogee because my boss wanted me to meet his boss (aka dad). he thinks he can convince his dad to hire me full-time and pay me more cash...i have my doubts. anyway, it was outing to meet new people and get paid to travel for the day.

anyway, it was rainy and cold, i had to drive, i didn't get to eat lunch and i chauffeured two koreans around. yes koreans, as in businessmen from seoul, south korea. something about manufacturing plumbing tools. thankfully one of them spoke wonderful english and we had a delightful conversation on the return trip from muskogee.

but seriously, how weird is that? i didn't mind the chauffeuring around so much but there was a seriously lack of planning on the part of the goofballs i'm working with. yeah, go ahead and send your important business partners with your temporary, seriously underpaid employee, driving a toyota echo...seriously do that...sounds like a genius idea to me.

but really the conversation was interesting.

did you know that there are 50 million people in seoul? and that south korea has the third largest amount of troops in iraq after the uk and the us?

and the fun continues...

today i went to that cool car wash place that you drive through and get to vacuum for free. about half way through the car wash...i lost a mirror. yes, something (i'm guessing a big piece of washing equipment) managed to snap my passenger side mirror right off my car.

ahahahahhhhhhhhhh...that's all i can say about that right now.

except my father did always warn about those car washes...

a streak of bad luck for me you say...

but then again yesterday we went to the river (it's a long story that involved e's family and some river near ada) and i stumbled on one cool arrowhead and two arrowhead pieces. granted if your family isn't into that sort of thing than you wouldn't understand the significance of finding one and how you don't normally stumble on to 3 of them...

but i somehow did.

and then...

we were rearended.

and my first thought was...crap i don't have a real job.

and then the punk pulled in a parking lot and started running.

and then we pulled around the corner and saw the stupid black civic pulling out of the said parking lot.

and then we got the license plate and called 911.

and then we talked to a nice police lady.

and then i sighed. and thought it could have been a whole lot worse because we are fine and my bumper is only a little scratched up.

but i'm still sighing.

i really need to stop sighing so much.

in case you missed it...

oh my...

i know this isn't for everyone but i'm so excited! you kc folks should come down for this.

so today...

i'm sitting at my make-shift desk, with a dog laying at my feet, in a plumbing supply distributor on south shields, typing part numbers into a $7000 laptop that isn't a mac and i wonder...how did i get here? how did this happen? less than three months ago i was a state employee, overpaid, receiving good benefits and unhappy.

and then i thought...i don't know exactly know why this happened but i'm happy today.

and then i lost track of the right female elbow part number and had to refocus at the task at hand.

my so called bizarre life...

i swear my forehead is tagged with a throw weird, bizarre situations at me sign.

i don't have a lot of time for details but i started my temp graphic design job today. it doesn't pay very well and it's on the southside (you have to say that with attitude) but the people are nice and very welcoming. so welcoming that i'm not sure they realize i am temporary. i've been asked to go to a meeting with their web designer, i've been set-up in their online meeting/review system, the length of my stay has been mentioned on a couple of occasion (along with my previous salary and how the company could afford a full-time designer)...it's true this would be a good turn of events if it came to fruition. but seriously, do i just ask for this stuff? because sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad...and i would like to learn how to control it.

i must go to bed soon...i've gone from a 5 minute commute to a crosstown 40 minute commute. sweet dreams.

some seriously bad luck...

someone asked me today if i've ever been let go from a job before. i think she asked me this to see if i had any experience coping with this sort of drama. and unfortunately i have...too many times. i think i have problem...it's called some seriously bad job luck.

here's a brief history of my job experience, dating back to 1991.

Beachler's IGA - Worked there all through high school. Unfortunately just as graduation occured my store was closed and I lost my plush part-time cashier job.

Spencer State Bank - First professional job thanks to all that cashier experience. Freshman year of college. Left for another bank - more money.

Union State Bank - Paid more and was closer to college. Left this position when I moved to Edmond to attend UCO.

Liberty Bank - I was working here part-time when E and I got married. I was going to school but didn't know what I wanted to do so I decided to get a full-time job. And here's where it gets interesting.

Nelson, Sherwood and Brown - Personal injury attorneys. Nice, huh. I had been there three months when I was told that Sherwood was bailing out and the firm would be closing. I had two weeks.

Clemons, Pate, LeBron and Wolfe - Hell disguised as a personal injury law firm. Mean horrible people, especially the Wolfe part. I hated it but needed a job. And I hated it and I'm sure it showed. After six months I was told to clean the library and then promptly fired in the said library.

PEC - A small family business that hired me because I faxed my resume from a church (or at least that was a huge selling point for me). Crazy family but I learned a lot there. And they let me work part-time while I finished my degree. After three and a half years was let go because they needed to cut costs. Ah...costs. So thanks to some friendly advice and encourgement from a co-worker I was on unemployment for quite some time.

E+A - Good job, good ending. The first good in a long run of bad endings.

OSRHE - Annoying job, good ending. Somehow doesn't seem so bad now (that doesn't mean I want to go back!).

GW whatever those crappy people call their crappy company - let go because of some lame reason.

Ok, so do you see this...I have had just as many bad endings to jobs as good. I think I need something - counseling, career advice, prayer...and wow I've had a lot of jobs. When my mother implied I was a job hopper...I think she was right.

But really I'm doing pretty good with everything. I've told my mother. She was nicer than expected (the job hopper comment was a month or so back) but I'm anticipating she will save her negativity until the holidays. I've picked up a temporary graphic design job for next week. A plumbing materials catalog...exciting huh? I figure it's some good practice, a little material to add to my list of work experience and some cash on top of my "getting paid to not work" cash that will help us get through the next few months until I figure out what I want to do.

Thanks everyone for your kind words. I have some lovely kind friends.

Happy weekending.

random e-mail...

so at some point jack o' lanterns became comparable to christians. very interesting.



Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff-- including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see. This was passed on to me from another pumpkin. Now, it is your turn to pass it to a pumpkin. I liked this enough to send it to all the pumpkins in my patch. Happy Fall!

i'm going to apologize in advance...

i realize this is a conversation i should probably have with some of you out there in person...the handful of you that read this crappy little blog...but i'm going to post it here. because honestly i'm not quite ready to deal with the awkwardness of it all...it just makes my head swim and dread come over my soul. dread. it's kind of like when my sister sent me and some of her closest friends an e-mail to announce that she was pregnant...this of course was awkward for her because she was seperated and discussing divorce with her then husband. thank goodness it was his baby because that could have been a billion times more awkward.

anyway, back to my news. on monday afternoon i was "dismissed" from my job. yes, this is the job that i was super excited about and thought would be a great fit for me. wow. i missed the boat on that one. it's a long story and i will be happy to discuss it with you in more detail...in person of course. i was told that they (the crazy husband and wife owners) had decided to take their marketing in a different direction (oddly enough, i was a new direction) and were going to start outsourcing marketing, writing, and graphic design needs. wow. cost saving was mentioned. i was given the line "it's our issue, nothing to do with you. double wow. but on a positive note i was given a month's severance pay. which is good but conveniently timed so that i can't file for unemployment.

but really they were crazy. other employees were lovely, team players but the owners were crazy. they were chaotic, unprofessional, cheap, unethical and people i really didn't like. and honestly, i think they didn't like me and that's the main reason i'm gone. i was calm, organized and refused to be a part of their chaos. another positive note, i have gained some more bizarre stories to add to my previous post.

luckily i knew this was coming. not literally but i knew it in my gut. i had been researching some options if it did happen and wasn't the least bit shocked when he gave me his lame speech.

so i'm doing ok. i'm sad. sad because i really wanted this job to work out and i feel like i tried (but they didn't). sad that i took a risk that completely blew up in my face. sad because i have to figure out what to do next which involves selling myself to another potentially crappy employer. insert my lengthy sigh here.

this has forced me to realize that i'm really not happy doing the job i've been doing. it's entertaining about one day a week and the rest of the time i'm just wishing i was doing something else. i'm not sure what that something else is but i'm going to try and look for it. as long as i can afford it. for the time being i'm going to try some temp stuff...talk to an agency, consider substitute teaching, beg for graphic design work to build my portfolio, etc. i'm just tired of this cycle of discontent that i'm in and i think this is a chance for me to experience some different things.

as long as i can afford it. and honestly i'm scared out of my noggin.

so in the meantime, i'm hanging out at home, getting some exercise and looking for some alternative ways to make some cash. i'm looking to do some free graphic design work so if you need anything or know anyone who does (thanks risa!) please send them my way.

feel free to send calming, peaceful, non-worry thoughts my way...because the bottle of rasberry vodka i bought monday night keeps calling my name.

now i just have to tell my mom. insert even bigger sigh here.

so oblivious...

i read a blog daily about a couple who is spending a 1,000 days at sea. it's fascinating to me. their drive to do this and well...i know nothing about sailing so it's fairly educational.

but i'm wondering how do things like this happen...really i want to know. we just keep living in the burbs, driving our suvs, refusing to recycle or take any responsibility for the earth and dumping crap in the ocean...it just drives me nuts. such simple little things that we refuse to do.

that's my rant. sorry.

(from Wikipedia)

The centre of the North Pacific Gyre is relatively stationary (the area it occupies is often referred to as the horse latitudes) and the circular rotation around it draws waste material in. This has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris in huge floating 'clouds' of waste, leading to the informal name The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Eastern Garbage Patch. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photodegrades, disintegrating in the ocean into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested.[1] The photodegraded plastic can attract pollutants such as PCBs. The floating particles also resemble zooplankton, which can lead to them being consumed by jellyfish, thus entering the ocean food chain. In samples taken from the gyre in 2001, the mass of plastic exceeded that of zooplankton (the dominant animalian life in the area) by a factor of six.

Occasionally, shifts in the ocean currents release flotsam lost from cargo ships into the currents around the North Pacific Gyre, leading to predictable patterns of garbage washing up on the shores around the outskirts of the gyre. The most famous was the loss of approximately 80,000 Nike sneakers and boots from the ship Hansa Carrier in 1990: the currents of the gyre distributed the shoes around the shores of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii over the following three years. Similar cargo spills have involved tens of thousands of bathtub toys in 1992 and hockey equipment in 1994. These events have become a major source of data on global-scale ocean currents. Various institutions have asked the public to report the landfall locations of the objects (trainers, rubber ducks, etc.) that wash up as a method of tracking surface waters' response to the deeper ocean currents. [2]

For several years ocean researcher Charles Moore has been investigating a concentration of floating plastic debris in the North Pacific Gyre. His study indicates that ocean currents have added to the mass until it is now about the size of Texas. Many of these long-lasting pieces wind up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals.[3]