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Feb. 7th, 2010 @ 01:05 am Alpha, Dells
One of the things I like about Alpha is that I get to write/succeed/live vicariously through Alphans. I bother them about submitting to the Dell Awards, mostly, and then grin when their names come up. They do.

This year, four Alphans. Here's the list. Rachel Sobel, Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Halpern, Lara Donnelly.

Then look down. More Alphans. Next year, more Alphans. Clearly, Alpha is taking over the world.
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Feb. 4th, 2010 @ 03:47 pm a good day
The rest of today would have to be pretty lousy to make it not a good day.
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Feb. 3rd, 2010 @ 06:55 pm kitty
Kitty only wants to play. She wants to be friends with Patina so much. She is small and fluffy and has a fluffy tail and a sort of mane-ruff thing going on, which I suppose means there's Maine Coon running in the feral community except for the fact that Kitty is six pounds.

She has a very delicate tongue. Nothing gets the smell of cat food off hands. Nothing. I showered and could still smell it. Today has not been a wet food day, however, because I discovered that while she eats her kibble, I can touch her.

She is not a hugely strokeable kitty, but she is receptive to earscritching. Hooboy, does she like her ears scritched. She's still nervous, she's still shaking, and she's also purring and dripping kitty drool on the bench.

She curls up into a little kitty croissant sometimes, relaxing from kittyloaf.
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Feb. 2nd, 2010 @ 06:54 pm done with today
I could have gone-- could still go, I suppose-- to an information session from one employer, but given the skepticism I got from its representative at the job fair and the fact that I still don't know exactly what I'd be doing, no.

I printed ten resumes, half Research and half Engineering, and came back with five Research and four Engineering. About what I expected, to be honest.

A few other things went well, I had a clementine or mandarin or some tiny delicious orange for a snack afterward, and I decided that shoveling can wait until it's light out.

No, I'm really not the person to live on a high-traffic corner lot.
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Feb. 2nd, 2010 @ 11:36 am why am I nervous?
I am not as prepared for today as I thought I would be a week ago. Still. I got like this for the interview some months ago, too, compounded by the fact that they then didn't call.

I suppose part of me thinks nothing will change, ever. This is not a realistic part of me.

Iron clothes, plan presentation, organize folder, obsess over clothes and possibly hair, clear off car, switch bags (pen phone parking money snack!), dress, remove as much cat hair as possible, throw hissyfit over own hair, drive, job fair, audition, home, back into comfortable clothes, shovel sidewalks. Then spend time with one snuggly neglected cat and one put-upon scared-and-slashy cat.
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Feb. 1st, 2010 @ 11:03 pm guess what?
You know what I did today? I mean, besides the usual walking and library and being a little too pushy for Halfcat?

I went grocery shopping.

I grabbed my bag and keys and went out to the car straight from the house and started it.

And then I brushed the snow off and went to HyVee.

Dad got in touch with a guy back home who likes electrical problems and has a reputation for being really thorough about them. So home I went, the car to fix. I spent the days being warm by the fire and watching Jeopardy.

What it seems to have been now, what was fixed, is a heater blower module. Why couldn't the Firestone guys find it? Because, unlike the horses, donkeys, and zebras that make up the battery, alternator, and rear suspension, this is a unicorn: it isn't always there. Jump the car, drive to the garage, hook it to the computer, there's no drain on the battery. Even the new guy couldn't find it. So, because he knows what he's doing, he took Milady Buick out for a drive.
At some point, the heater turned on and started blowing.
When he came back and turned the car off, there was a drain. He fixed it and kept her overnight to make sure she was all the way fixed. I let her sit longer than usual to be sure she was all the way fixed.

My car starts.

This helps a lot.
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Feb. 1st, 2010 @ 01:42 am booklog, end of January
Sometime in the next week, I might go through the booklog posts and start some numbers. I have Thoughts.

That said, here are some books. ( Books! )
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Jan. 30th, 2010 @ 11:32 pm week
This week has been odd.

For one thing, I lost track of days. This is normal, but usually, it's because nothing is going on. This week was broken up into pieces that didn't quite fit together.

First, cat. She has eaten in my presence and even out of a spoon I held. I have seen her paws and tail, though not all at once. Mostly, she watches me from the cat bench and dozes. Sometimes she goes from kittyloaf to liquid. She's a really gorgeous cat. I've been trying to pay special attention to Patina so she doesn't get jealous-- she is, after all, the Best Cat, the kitty of my heart, the one who wakes me with snuggles in the morning.

I spent a few days at home, too, because Dad made an appointment with a local guy who really likes electrical problems. Milady Buick got a new heater blower module; the problem was that it only malfunctioned after it turned on, which meant the car had to be driven some and then checked. Horses, donkeys, zebras, now a unicorn.
But I haven't driven since getting back to Iowa City. Tomorrow. If she starts, that's one stress gone.

I got a TB test for a kibblejob, and while that was some hassle-- where does one get a TB test?-- I am not tubercular. This means that next week, I can take subbing jobs with the school district. It's not huge pay, but it's something, and I can take as much or as little as I want. Between that and the potential second kibblejob, for which I will present on vermicompost, that's maybe another stress gone.

There was also some socializing and I applied for Job 99. I had promised myself a corset as a reward for Job 100, but this probably won't happen. Not the same as the Barcelona thing not happening, just that I don't feel secure enough financially for it and can't remember the Etsy seller with the inexpensive ones.

Still, ninety-nine jobs. And the engineering job fair is Tuesday. Go me.

But even the removal of the car stress and the money stress, if they work out, will help a lot. It's not only the little things, like setting up the battery charger and walking downtown in the morning, then coming back in the afternoon to to groceries, or the almost comforting excision of me-buying-things. It's also the uncertainty-- will the car start? Will it ever? Will I need a new car? Will this job work? This one? Why haven't they called me? How long can I make my parents' loan last? Will I be here in a month? In two? How should I rearrange my Budget spreadsheet to reflect my actual finances?

I'm not going to end on that.

Five Things That Make Me Feel Better
Waking up with the Catina, warm and snuggly and warm and loving me.
Looking at the Budget spreadsheet and seeing how good I've been this month.
Sorting the Spreadsheet of Doom by color and seeing how many jobs I've applied for, and how many are still open or at least haven't rejected me.
Fiddly editing work, which I mostly don't do.
Being warm in general.
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Jan. 28th, 2010 @ 11:26 am to-do list, brain-related
I really must stop evaluating choices in terms of how much they'll hurt when I fail.

Sometimes the fact that I made or did something is a feature-- look at this, I did it, how awesome am I?-- and sometimes it is a bug-- look at this, it is full of flaws, it sucks and therefore so do I. Must get more of the former, less of the latter.

Find some physical activity I cannot possibly fail to improve at. So far, I have skiing, which I get to do once a year, if that, and even then it carries some doing-it-wrong. Maybe weightlifting, because while I can fail to improve there, it's not a skill. It is very unlikely that my lasting inability to keep my feet on the ground will matter.

Minor extravagances are necessary. "I cannot X, I don't have the money," is only as valid as I am broke. I have Amazon money, I have a gift card, I have another gift card, I have tax refund. I can afford things.

Related, stop feeling guilty about social spending. People are necessary. Five dollars for Knitter's Breakfast, fiveish for Friday at the Saloon, this is not what ate my money. The car did that.

When I am good at something, it is not meaningless or trivial. (Stop providing counterexamples! I mean, yes, standardized test-taking is a really backhanded skill. But I am really good at them, was on my high school's standardized-test-taking team and went to State, no seriously I did, and now I have an audition for Kaplan, so IT IS A VALID AND USEFUL SKILL.)

Eat something. Karina's cinnamon tea makes me feel better. Buy more, drink more, enjoy the teakettle from Mom. Maybe buy a Pretzel Pride mug to show off at Breakfast. Food is good.

The fact that both kibblejobs that seem to be working out could have worked out four months ago does not matter. It was not appropriate to have a kibblejob in September. I thought it would be easier to get a more kibbley kibblejob, like a coffeeshop or bookstore, than it turned out to be. This is not an error that carries moral weight. I didn't know about subbing and Kaplan wasn't ideal.

Do things as they occur to me. "I should clean up the plants," 'should' aside, means, "I will now clean up the plants, right this minute."

I must figure out a better way to separate the factors that make me upset. Not because any of them are dismissable-- if I am sad, I am sad, and knowing it's hormones doesn't make me less sad-- but because then I can figure out how much of me being upset is, um, replicable? applicable to me? actionable? I'm not sure how to put it into words. There's upset that translates to I sure do suck, and that's the part I don't like.

Stressors: hormones, lack of eating, lack of sun, lack of physical movement, lack of people, applying for jobs I really am not qualified for, applying for jobs I think I'm not qualified for, applying for jobs I am vastly overqualified for, being cold, having a lot of housework hanging over my head undone, idleness of mind.
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Jan. 26th, 2010 @ 11:07 am kitties
I now have 1.5 cats.

0.5 Cat is an ex-stray brought in by friends of friends. She is small and wary, and their four cats did not like her. I am fostering/socializing her until either a) I declare her to be mine forever or b) I move and she hates me. I am not allowed to call her Schrodinger.

They call her Princess. In my head, she is Sheba right now, but at some point we'll interact in a less cringe-warn-blood way and something better will occur to me.

She and Patina spent some time in the office together, initially a check to make sure they wouldn't kill each other. Patina is not thrilled, but she's my very best cat, so I'm working on making it up to her. So far, lots of snuggles.

The semicat is less than half her weight.
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Jan. 25th, 2010 @ 10:31 am polytopic origin of species
( I said I'd post this... a year ago. )
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Jan. 24th, 2010 @ 07:13 pm good things
1) I gave brownies to Snowblower Man and his wife. Snowblower Man has, at least twice, gone over my sidewalks with said machine, and it's really nice to not have to take care of it all the time. Both times, I've done either the initial shoveling or next-day shoveling when the drifts cover the walk again, but it helps a lot. Especially with my talent for giving blood the day I need to shovel.
He and his wife were friendly and made sure to get my name. Nice retired couple, Hawkeye fans.

2) Had a game afternoon with friends. I did not win Settlers, but I didn't lose, either-- three-way tie because we played until we had to leave, not to a set number of points. No one could get any grain whatsoever.

3) The hosts for said game afternoon feed and keep stray cats. They have four cats and a dog, and one cat in the basement who's been in for three weeks or so and needs socializing. She's vetted and healthy, just spayed last week, but their cats hiss and freak.
Could I maybe take the cat and socialize?
I weakened. I asked a friend to be my shoulder angel. She shrugged and said it seemed like a pretty good deal.
So tomorrow I get a potentially temporary, potentially permanent cat to see if she'll hang out more with the Catina and me than with the couple who brought her in and their guard felines.

4) Dad talked to his car guys, and one of them likes electrical problems and is really stubborn about fixing them. So Tuesday, I go back home and drop Milady Buick for what we hope will be the last electrical work.
I almost cried driving away from home after Christmas because Dad gave me the battery charger and paid for a new muffler-- made the appointment, didn't give me any opportunity to say no, just moved forward accepting as fact that the car is noisy and it shouldn't be, and he can fix it, so he does.
It's not quite the same as my parents paying rent for the next two months (which they are) but it's in the same family. I have really good parents. They may drive me crazy sometimes, but even at their most crazymaking, if I needed something, they'd get it to me.

5) I have two medium-sized hurdles between me and two kibblejobs. One is a TB test, the other is a five-minute presentation on a topic of my choice. I'm going with worm composting. Maybe that'll encourage me to actually harvest the stuff.
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Jan. 19th, 2010 @ 11:16 am all my issues express themselves in the jobsearch
I used to be a really good singer. Then, in high school, I spent a year dealing with blending issues-- my voice, while good, stuck out like crazy, especially during loud parts. I open up, I fill the space. I resented everyone for a while, the director for acting like he wanted more sound and then drawing attention to my surplus of it, the rest of the choir for not sounding like me when the previous year had, et cetera. Eventually, I accepted that if I'm in a good choir, I'm a weak point. My voice is good for solo work, but no one wants to hear big loud operatic mezzo soprano in my circle. Besides, I haven't sung in almost four years. What I had, I've mostly lost.

I used to be a really good writer. I sent stories out, I wrote regularly, my ideas were interesting and new, and I had multiple The Stories. My school writing, mostly scientific, was better than ever. I could express myself clearly while avoiding the pitfalls Dr Balser mentioned, my figures were clear, and I could do it fast. Then, in grad school, I took on the Chapter of Doom and discovered that I was missing an entire skill set, and even now I can't encapsulate what that lack is. I tried and tried and still had nothing when the first and second and next deadlines went past. I asked for help and then didn't use it. I started not avoiding the pitfalls, writing badly because at least it was writing. I finally realized that I needed to be in charge of the writing on group projects because otherwise my arrogance would inevitably lead to tension. My fiction dried up and disappeared. I looked at the half-written novel and discovered that not only was its premise and worldbuilding unsustainable, but so were those of the next one and the one after that. I stopped giving worthwhile crits and spent some time still thinking I was good at them. I stopped submitting stories because I had none that drove me to it.

I used to be smart and interesting. Then I met so many other smart and interesting people and it became apparent that I am smart and interesting compared to these people over here, the ones I'm not trying to be, while the members of the communities I aspire to are generally way above my level. I am slowly becoming smart and interesting in comparison to Alphans, but that's because I have a five-year start on them. Even then, there are four or five in every year who are worlds better than I am. Besides, what kind of smart and interesting am I that I need to compare myself to high schoolers and college students?

I used to be pretty. This one is tough. Sometime in junior high or early high school, I had a huge tantrum-like thing over the fact that I was gorgeous and too cowardly to dress in the clothes I liked because it would draw attention to me. The second part of this remains true. I actually cried over the fact that in ten or fifteen years, I'd look back and regret that I didn't wear fun clothes that would make me look good. I bought them sometimes, but couldn't take that final step to wearing them. I cried because someday I would know I'd wasted something, that I was wasting something, and that I was too afraid of change and attention to ever fix that part of me.
Young Me was pretty perceptive.

I know that there are good things about me. I know this. I just don't believe it.

There are two paragraphs I thought of writing-- in one case wrote and deleted-- because I realized that they were kind of positive. I am still a better public speaker than most of my peers. I have gotten better at people in the last ten years. The first doesn't matter much, and like writing, it slid back once the standards of those grading me weren't so high (of course, it should be my own standards, not professors') and the second... I'm still not good in social situations. But I understand things better than I did when I was fifteen, I have multiple groups of friends who make it easy to be social, and I am okay at suggesting get-togethers outside of whatever usual context exists. Progress!

"Know thyself" is perfectly good, but I wish my self-examination turned up something good once in a while. Even knowing that I'm overcritical-- that's still bad. I am trying not to be completely delusional about my abilities, trying not to lie to myself or others (hello jobsearch!), and it's hard to face that day after day. I can't blame anyone else for what goes on in my head. I can't blame anyone else for my shortcomings. That's one of the only things worse than ignoring them.

This post brought to you by this entry at Bitch PhD and too many self-evaluation surveys.
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Jan. 18th, 2010 @ 10:16 am books read, early January
I meant to post this three days ago, but then there was a trip to Michigan (hello Michigan!) with friends, to friends, and lots of food. No reading, so all of these are from the first half of the month, but I am lazy. Everyone else is walking the dogs now, stretching a bit before folding back into the car for seven hours. Here is a belated post.

( bookbookbook )
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Jan. 11th, 2010 @ 05:04 pm genre
From yesterday's call home, when Mom said that she'd lent Boneshaker to the librarian at one of her schools, saying that it was science fiction but not really, what was it I called it, something punk? but it was really good:

"A lot of times I think science fiction is... the space ones, with the ladies, and the bosoms, and the outfits...."
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Jan. 10th, 2010 @ 11:21 am ow
Idly picking fuzz off my black sweater-- its lint-magnet properties are why I haven't worn it in a year, though I like it a lot-- I realized that a fair amount of it was yellow dog hair.

It's been more than a year. I miss my dog.

So. Get job, move to job, settle in, wait a bit, then look into additional animals. Dog, because dog. Cat, because that's more reasonable. I can have a second cat much more easily than a first dog.

Still, dog.
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Jan. 10th, 2010 @ 09:33 am turkey
HyVee had turkeys at fifty cents a pound.

I did not think until later that I could leave my impulse buy outside instead of resolving to cook it when it'd thawed in the fridge.

The friends that are coming are coming at twelve-thirty or one, earlier than expected.

I called home, mostly for reassurance ("Oh, yeah, that'll be all right, as long as the popper pops,") and got worry ("But you cook turkeys at 325. Why didn't you put it in earlier?").

Ducks are so much easier.
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Jan. 9th, 2010 @ 12:39 am jobsearch
This week, I utterly failed to apply for three jobs I've had sitting open on my computer since Christmas.

On the other hand, they're dwarf-breading me into all sorts of productivity.

I'm actually a little qualified for them, so that's something. Must get on that.

Please feel free to harass me until I report success.
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Jan. 7th, 2010 @ 12:24 pm blood, snow, birds
The weather and I are on the same pattern: it throws snow and wind at us, I walk to give blood. In better weather, I've driven because I never got the timing down; I walk these days because my car is not starting reliably and anyway, better to lose my footing on foot than in a vehicle.

Good things: platelets and jumbo plasma, just under an hour total, very little of it with citrate-tingles. I got a ride home for a few blocks with friends, who may help me eat a turkey in a couple days. It's not actually very cold right now-- even before I got a ride, I had my coat open and a scarf pulled down.
And eagles! Two and a maybe bald eagles, one scooping up fish from just downstream of the Iowa bridge, one doing the same just down from the dam alongside the maybe, which was just far enough away I couldn't judge size or shape to compare and didn't have the head or tail anyway.

The tradition seems to be snow, blood, and an eagle or two, not necessarily in that order.
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Jan. 5th, 2010 @ 02:23 pm random encounter
While Winter Ninja-ing my way back from town, I heard a sound like a duck. There, ahead of me, was a shadow. Duck-shaped, black against the snow, couldn't tell much else because Winter Ninja does not wear glasses (it is cold in Iowa just now).

It stood up, still quacking, and walked a bit away from me. Male mallard, sitting and standing in the snow, quacking softly but disapprovingly. I stood for a moment, then walked on.

Poor confused duck. I, at least, have to stay here. A duck in Iowa in January, when it's cold enough I start looking for eagles near our open water? When he could be comfortably south in the warm and sun? Not even near the creek through town?

Not enough down in the world.
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