Another Job

I interviewed with the art supervisor of the district last week. Then the principal's secretary called me and I interviewed with him and his "associate principal." They're both younger than me, btw.

The school's not in white suburban central, which is good, but it's undergoing renovation, which isn't so good. They need someone right away, but I haven't heard anything in the last few days.

Then, this week, I got another call. The art supervisor from my most recent job called me to tell me of an opening that might happen in October, and asked me to come in and interview with her. We talked for an hour and a half. Turns out the current teacher's letting the kids have all the power. Not good, but also sometimes easy to let happen.

So I've got two opportunities here. To be honest, part of me's kinda mad. I'd already made peace with the fact that I'm no longer a teacher in a public school. Now, apparently the universe has other plans for me, or it's all some big cosmic bait and switch to pull my attention away from the plans I'd made outside the public school arena.

But I'm trying to be positive here. I'll get a pay raise, and it'll be a new school and a totally different experience.

Also, two of my friends have recently announced that they're expecting. One of whom tried over and over, so that's good. Another of whom I'm proud to know. And her husband too.

Congratulations seem to be in order a lot today.

Jobs

I quit my job in June. Then I changed my mind, but there wasn't another available. Then I had a plan to find a sponsor, like a Nascar driver, to find a corporation to pay me to teach art. That didn't pan out (yet), but I'm scheduled to teach some classes at an arts and crafts store.

Yesterday a school district called. They need an Art teacher for a high school. In the middle of September. Which almost never happens.

So I have an interview tomorrow. I'm trying to stay detached, but it's hard not to make imaginary plans in my head of what I'm going to do if I get the job. Especially since I'll get a substantial pay increase.

Wish me luck.

Happy Birthday Melleners!

Happy Birthday Melleners!

Why don't you mosey on over to my favorite music blog and wish her many happy returns? You don't have to mention I sent you, just pretend you knew already.

How Creative Can Stacking Paper Be?

That's currently my life. Stacking sheets of paper. I'm creating sculptures out of binder clips, I'm so bored. Thankfully the people where I work are very nice. But I'm a temp and I'm trying not to get attached.

I was all ready for last Friday to be my last day, but they decided they need me one more week. They let me check files out and stack them at home so that I can do my other job too. Which has taken me more than a month to go through the application process, and I'm still not sure when I'll start, if ever.

I'm tired. I came up with an idea for Illustration Friday's topic for "safe." It's not exactly PC, but I think it's apropos. Go to Distilled if you'd like to see it.

Lute Riley Honda Sucks

I took my car with the ailing a/c to the dealership in Dallas. They told me it was the condenser, and it would cost $440, but that they wanted to give me a deal and so they'd take $100 off to make it $340. I arranged my appointment, and thought no more of it.

The day of the appointment arrived. I drove to the dealershipo at about 6:45 in the morning and arranged for their free shuttle to take me to work and pick me up again.

While at work, the service guy called me. He said they'd definitely found the problem, which made me feel relief. I'd already replaced the compressor at about $900 and the a/c electrical panel for $350. He told me that the service normally runs $540, but that with the $100 of that I'd be getting a great deal at $440.

I said, "That's not what you said before. That quote's gone up $100 since Saturday."

He insisted that he'd said no such thing, and that it wasn't possible that he would make a mistake like that. I told him to make the repairs anyway, and finished my work and waited for the shuttle.

At the dealership I pointed out to the service guy that he'd not said anything near $500. He said he remembered, but that he'd go talk to his manager and see if he could do anything else for me. My car wasn't yet ready, so I waited in the waiting room.

The service guy came back, and gave me the dealership line of all dealership lines, "My manager was standing right next to me, and he heard me quote you the higher price."

I pressed him some more, but he didn't budge. I ended up having to pay $420. But, oh joy, I got a coupon for a free oil change.

So Lute Riley lies. Get your quotes in writing.

Let's ban everything from air travel

I never really understood the term "clockwatcher" until this week. I've been temping at a bank, doing what's called "stacking files." I'm taking mortgage files and taking everything out and putting it back in the correct order. I keep it consistent with a series of slipsheets with headings and check boxes on them. Asleep yet?

At work today my two co-workers were talking about the terrorists that the British apprehended. One of them is afraid to fly. The other one wants to know why the airlines couldn't anticipate this threat and ban liquids sooner. Then the first one said that she doesn't know why Homeland Security can't keep us secure.

I'll tell you why. Hindsight only works one way. I can't express very well at the moment how I feel about all the panic, but here's a passage from The Liquid World by William Saletan at Slate.

"That's the bottom line: We die. In a liquid world, you can't seal off evil. All you can do is fight liquid with liquid. You have to absorb the tragedy, flowing around and through it. You need the strength of a river, not a rock. You need resilience. You can't be untouchable, but you can be undefeated."

. . .

A Job

I have a temporary job. In Dallas. At a mortgage place. Stacking files.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm SUPER excited. I get to drive through rush hour traffic tomorrow while everyone's taking their kids to school. Then I get to stay there until 5:30. That's gonna be weird. I can't remember the last time I worked hours like that.

School hours were 7:30-3:30. Mostly. Let's see if I don't end up murdering someone at the end of the three week period.

Actually, I'd just like to kill whoever made the decision to make the employees of this place take a drug test. Nothing makes you feel like a criminal quite like handing someone else a cup of your urine.

My Life Plan

I'm jobless. I quit my job and now am unemployed. School for the actual teachers starts tomorrow, and it's the first time in eight years that I won't be there.

I expected to be really sad about it, but other than feeling a faint urge to go to school anyway, I'm not sad.

Instead, I'm planning on being my own boss. I've been writing a business plan and it's going really well. I'm spending a lot of time on the internet doing research on businesses, marketing and selling and social networking.

I found this site called dandelife that I'm having a great time playing with. It's like a blog but it incorporates all your titles into a timeline, and you can add tags too. It's fun, go look.

Boys, again, are dumb

My roommate notices very little. We have, in fact, had long conversations about the things he doesn't notice. He says it's because they're ultimately not important. Not my position, but sometimes arguing about it takes too much effort.

We were in the car and passed a pretty crepe myrtle. I mentioned how I like them, but not the bright pink ones. I told him that I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but did he notice that the crepe myrtle in our backyard had bloomed, and was of the fuschia persuasion.

He said something similar to "There's a crepe myrtle in the backyard?"and then I pointed out that the crepe myrtle occupies the side of the driveway that he pulls his car into. He said no, he hadn't noticed the color. Just then we pulled into the driveway and I pointed at the shrub and the blossoms overhanging the fence.

He looked up at the side of the garage and said, "What happened to the fixtures on the wall? Why aren't there any lightbulbs up there?"

I started to laugh, hysterically, and it took a moment for me to catch my breath and reply. "Bear," I said, "you're the one who removed the lightbulbs for me, so I could buy new ones."

"Oh." he said. "When did I do that?"

Apparently, there have been deeds. . .

. . . and I should be telling you of them.

Okay, so the other night I was getting ready for bed. I was in my room taking my clothes off, and just as I had taken off my bra, in flies a gigantic black bug.

At first I thought it was a wasp, so I backed away from it, but then, clutching my unhooked bra to my chest, I noticed that it wasn't flying like one and that it looked an awful lot like a cockroach.

I searched around desperately for something to fling over myself to make the short, but very visible, trip into the kitchen to get the flyswatter, and finally found a t-shirt.

I saw the bug on the floor about to go under my bed, and pushed Calvin The Giant-Fly-Eater toward it, but the loser turned up his nose. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the flyswatter, but the bug had disappeared. I used the flyswatter and a flashlight to search, but no go.

This made me not want to sleep in my room. I've woken up with a cockroach on my pillow before, and I didn't want that to happen again. Reluctantly, I decided to get over it and sleep in my bed despite my fear.

I woke the next morning to my lovely kittens, called The Brothers Dim by some, mauling the laundry basket. They'd found the wonderfully un-cockroachy beetle, and I captured it and put it outside.

Enough deed for you, o' pushy one?

To Remind Chris and the Diva

It's been a while, but here are the things I wrote down that I must remind you:

Read Lamb by Christopher Moore

Next time that you're in Paris, go to Shakespeare & Co, the book store.

Drawing

A very sad article in the New York Times about the ubiquity of amateur drawing in times past. You might need to register to read it.

France Photos

So I've been experimenting with my photos in Photoshop. I know that it's slightly cheesy, but I love me some filtered goodness. I also have a program called Thumbs Plus, which I can't recommend highly enough. It's the first program I ever used to organize and rename photos.

I've used Picasa also, and it's okay, but Thumbs Plus uses your current directory structure and I find it easier to locate and add things. It's not free, but totally worth the price.

Here's some of my experiments:

This porch in Arles really got our attention. Though it was so hot that I thought my eyes were going to boil out of my head.
I increased the saturation by at least 50, then used median to blur and then the watercolor filter.









This scene from the cliff at Les Baux captured the countryside perfectly. I used the same filters/effects here. I find that using the watercolor filter by itself makes for a much duller picture.








This is the cloister from the insane asylum in St. Remy where van Gogh lived for a while.
I used Thumbs Plus for this one. It's got a filter called Drawing, and it looks similar to the Photoshop filter called Photocopy.

New, New Me

Okay, so you can edit the date if you press the little button. No, I'm not simple. Just a bit focused on my annoyances.

I like this other photo better.

Matisse

I love Matisse. He's great with line, great with color, and he kept on creating until he died. So did Georgia O'Keeffe, but then she went blind.

Matisse's grave is in Nice, near the Matisse Museum. We went to the museum, and then tried to follow the signs to his grave but almost didn't find the actual stone. You have to go through the crypts, past the other crypts on the same level, and then go down the stairs. It's a beautiful spot, almost as peaceful as Monet's garden.

Anyway, photos.







Matisse's grave

















Monet's garden

New Me

Trying to add a photo to my profile. Did you know that you can't edit the date on your posts anymore? Not happy about that.

Customs

On a quest for blogs of drawings, for some reason I ended up at Escape Blog, a travel blog which has this hilarious entry dealing with the attitudes a newly married woman should have for sex.

It also has descriptions of all kinds of traditions in other cultures. I'm going to go read some more.

More Shots of France

I went to France two years ago, and spent a few days in Paris. That trip was go-go-go, and I thought this one might be a little more relaxed. It was. A little.

Anyway, my sister and I had a really good time, except for one hotel problem which I'll address later.

We got lost(ish) in the Louvre looking for something that's actually in the Orsay.










This sculpture's actually on one of the outside walls of the Louvre. If you've got Google Earth (which I recommend highly as a fabulous time-eater), then you can see the wall and the Pyramid from above.






This photo's from a market in a small town in Provence. LOVED the markets! I wish that I knew how to set one up in my town. It's just bougie enough to love and support one.







Take a close look at the photo, and you can see the test tubes they were using to package the spices. I didn't buy any of those, but I did get some wonderful roasted almonds and some strawberries.


In two years or so, we'll be going back to Europe. I don't know where yet, because my niece gets to choose, and she doesn't know what she wants to see mostly because she doesn't know what's out there. Probably Spain or Italy.

Where's the best place you ever took a vacation? Got any photos to share?

Back from France

My sister Jenny and I have been back from France for a week. It's been a short week.

We had some great times, some not so great times, and I took more than 400 photos. That's nothing compared to someone I know who took more than 700 photos, but hopefully I'll get copies of those. I finally finished numbering and renaming all the photos. That's slightly tedious, but I'll bet not as much as loading all of them onto the internet.

Here's a small sample of what we did/saw:

The Arc de Triomphe





















Notre Dame de Paris

















The Eiffel Tower




















More to come later.

In the Airport

A woman with blond hair barely confined by a kerchief looks at you. You look back, thinking how pretty she is.

She says, "Can I read you a poem?"

You say, "Okay."

Your sister says, "My sister really likes poetry."

And then you say, "That has to be the strangest thing anyone's ever asked me in an airport."

She reads to the both of you a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver.

When she is done, you think that you've never had such an experience before, and wish that more days could have a moment like this one.

You tell her your name, and she says, "I'm Abby. I read that in this book and I just had to share it with someone."

You and your sister spend some time talking with Abby and then she leaves to catch her flight to New York. You realize that few things in your life will equal the oddity and beauty of being read a poem by a stranger in an airport.



12/10/2011 EDITED to change link, the old link stopped working so I added one to Wikipedia instead.