Appendex 1

Let's pretend I posted these with the I-70 post a couple of days ago. We carried around the camera for the entire trip--saw friends and family, did lots of things--but it only occurred to us that maybe we should take pictures on these two occasions. Not sure what this says about us.

















The picture below was technically taken immediately after our return--but it is a pictures of our souvenirs so it counts. The alcohol tax in Chicago is a little crazy.

My little dependency

One day while temping a couple of years ago, my gchat stopped working. It was down for almost an hour. I had tried signing out and back in, signing in from various locations, restarting my computer, everything. The error message seemed to indicate a firewall or the network administrator had killed all chat. I called Kenny in a panic and near tears. I was hyperventilating a bit. I could handle the ridiculous lack of work and coworkers I had--but only with my gchat. I imagined all the hours that lay before me sans chat. Online news can only entertain you for so long. I would go insane.

Thankfully gchat came back to me that day. Today, however, the cubicle world has lost another weapon in its collective arsenal against boredom. Scrabulous is gone. Assuming Hasbro and the Scrabulous folks don't work this out and give me back my Scrabulous I think this will be a day I'll always remember. I'll remember where I was the day they took it away. I'll remember work life in terms of before Scrabulous died and after it died. Maybe one day I'll have one of those jobs where I'll be busy all the time. Maybe the pain will lessen over time and I'll find new ways to fill my time. For now, I'll just contemplate this travesty in disbelief--maybe talk to my friends on gchat about it.

Exotic travels along I-70

So. Kenny and I went on a little tour of Missouri over the last week. We had to go to Kansas City to find out how much damage an eight-pound poodle had done to our loft. Also we went to court to evict said poodle and his owner. Good times were had by all and definitely let me know if you or somebody you know is interested in renting a really beautiful loft in the heart of Kansas City. We have decided this time, however, that we would prefer to rent to people who pay rent as it is our favorite quality in prospective tenants.

Also. Turns out Kansas City recently birthed a whole new area. I swear it wasn't there last time I visited. They've been talking about the Power and Light District for a long time, but now it's there and it's really quite spectacular. I think it would be more fun if I was single and/or younger--but good for KC. We were there with Megan and Andrew so that of course made it a good time.

We stopped in Columbia to visit people and restaurants. Sophia's (our favorite Columbia restaurant where we had our first leaving the house date) was temporarily closed and I almost cried. We went to Addison's instead and then to the 'Berg of course.

Next stop was St. Louis. There we helped Kenny's dad pick out and set up a new computer and email account. One day he'll learn to love tabbed internet browsing and gmail's conversation grouping. I just know it.

Perhaps the highlight of the trip was our three visits to Culver's. That's three visits in three different states. We got butterburgers in Iowa, Kit Kat swirl custard in Missouri, and fried cheese curds (dipped in ranch of course) in Illinois. I really have no idea why my pants are getting snug.

Prime resume material.

A big part of being a temp can be finding ways to fill your time. At the job I've been at for the past week or so there is about 5 minutes worth of work in any given day. The rest of the time it is important to be here so that I can answer the phone in case somebody does finally call, and it's not a wrong number and it's not a Spanish recording telling me to dial 1 to claim my prize. The following is a list of things I have had time to do so far this week.

1. Spend 3 hours trying to determine the best place to take my father-in-law to get a hot dog.
2. Take naps in the little fountainy/flowery area in front of the building.
3. Spend 3 hours trying to determine the best place to satisfy my father-in-law's Jewish deli request.
4. Play a good 10 or 11 games of Scrabulous.
5. Go to my high school class reunion site and discover that 80% of my former female classmates have spawned an average of 2 children. Find out that 3-5% of those mothers have given their children socially handicapping names.
6. Get a money order for my boss and prepare his traffic ticket guilty plea.*
7. Both receive AND send letters and various packages.*
8. Apply to 3 jobs. Hmm. Maybe more time should have been devoted to this one.
9. Read 300 archive entries on Dooce.
10. Work on my putting skills with the office's golf set thingy (because corporate offices have those?)
11. Look for an apartment and a dog for a friend.
12. Resort to clicking on links to blogs in various people's comments sections because I have already read all of the blogs I usually read and damn it, I need more blog reading material.
13. Eat all of the M&Ms.

*These items were actually required of me by said job.

Careers I ruled out...

I've talked myself out of lots of careers in my life. It's good thing I narrowed all of my options down to...temping?

1. Interior Decorator: My friend, Erica, and I used to use old design books and random counter top samples to play pretend when we were little. I rearranged my room weekly and watched Designing Women incessantly. I later decided that I did not need to be a decorator professionally and that I could always just redecorate my own house.
2. Journalist: I was on the newspaper in highschool. I ran for Editor (did not get it) and had a column that I really enjoyed writing. I went to the University of Missouri-Columbia for college. Sure, it's the oldest journalism school in the country and is often ranked as the best--but I decided that I didn't need a journalism degree to be a journalist or at least to be a columnist, which is what I really thought I wanted to do. I decided to go get a degree in something else that would make me more qualified to write about things later. I ended up getting Sociology and International Studies degrees instead--because those are a million times more useful, right?
3. Teacher: This one I only briefly considered. I think I would enjoy it if I could teach Social Studies or English and only teach children who were nice. I would like the summers off. My mom picked this career because she wanted to have the same schedule as her kids. Makes sense. But. There are all those kids that aren't nice and also those ones that are just annoying? And all of that grading and lesson planning in the evenings?
4. Lawyer: It might be completely impossible to be a high school debater (shut up) and not contemplate this career path. I looovveeed debate. A lot. I liked building and dissecting arguments. I'm not really sure why I decided initially to get my Master's instead of a law degree. However, while I was working at the law school to pay for tuition I witnessed the mess that is your typical law student. Law school can be grueling and really competitive and people just didn't seem happy. Also, you graduate with big debt and then have to try to get one of those jobs where they pay you lots of money but make you work 80 hours a week. Or maybe I've watched too many movies.

Pretty sure the list could go on. I wonder why I felt like I had to talk myself out of everything--why there was this big need to cross things off the list? These days I just need there to be something on that list. Something that people will hire me to do.

Oh yeah, last weekend...

God bless America. And beer.

















Kegs and Croquet. This is how we celebrated the birth of our country. Our friend Abby invited us to her parents' house for a weekend of merriment. Turns out I was much better at hot tubbing part than at playing croquet part. There was a pretty serious tournament complete with time trials, brackets, semi-final and final rounds. I think I learned (though never implemented) that the trick to playing well is to not hold the mallet correctly or in any way resembling a golf putter. Instead, center it on your body and push it like a broom or swing it like a pendulum...if that makes any sense. Think about using it like a pool cue sometimes. Whatever you do, don't hold it at all like I tried to. It was not pretty. The search for the one sport I am good at continues...

The state of Kenny.

I was sitting in the living room while Kenny was taking a bath, and I kept hearing a strange sound. It sounded like he was underwater blowing bubbles. I went in to check on him and found this:

















He had finished his MGD Light (that he took to the bath with him?) and had decided to use it as a bath toy. He was submerging it and then pouring it out and starting over again.

















This is not just Kenny being messy. This is where he keeps his pants now--next to the couch--because he doesn't need to wear pants when he sits on the couch. Also, chances are, if he needs to put pants on, they will be close to him if they are close to the couch.























Thank God this experiment is over.

I want to be a Temp when I grow up.

This week I babysit the silent phone in the fancy office. It's not the worst thing in the world, really. It's like couch time, but more productive.

Julie tagged me in her blog to write 6 random things about myself. I'm not sure how this is different than any other post I write, but let's give it a try.

1. Sometimes I check my own blog to see if there are any new posts.
2. I have a history of becoming emotionally attached to objects in a somewhat socially ostracizing way. First there was a collection of tiny plastic farm animals I would occasionally set up on my desk in junior high. Then there was the plastic corn and banana necklaces my friend Molly and I wore at debate tournaments in highschool. Finally there has been Booger--who at least appears to me to have generated less ridicule than the earlier objects.
3. I had an irrational yet debilitating fear of Eyeore for years.
4. Speaking of the irrational, I don't eat veal, duck, goat or sheep--mostly because I find them to be too cute and similar to puppies.
5. All of the men on this floor have to come get keys from me so they can go potty.
6. I hate mini-golf. I suck at it, and I am convinced that nobody really enjoys it after the first 4 holes.
   

I am taggging Megan, Courtney, Lindsey, Molly, Jack, and Jack's friend.

here are the rules:
link to the person who tagged you.
post the rules on your blog.
write six random things about yourself.
tag six people at the end of your post.
let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
let the tagger know when your entry is up.