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Oh Horrid Horrid Day...
Well not completely horrid - read some truly rewarding posts on atpo board (Tch, OnM, morgraine, manwitch), and some truly rewarding entries in live-journal -oh, and a happy birthday to aliera. Another piceses...
The following is cut to protect the innocent, such as aliera who deserves the loviliest of birthdays.
Oh Horrid day, Horrid day...
You know things are going badly when you reach your job interview and discover that you left the notebook with the resumes and application information at home. I had put the information in my bag, but must have, prior to leaving my dept. taken it out again to retrieve information on where the interview was located, then in my stupidity forgot to put the notebook back in my bag. I discover my mistake in the bathroom at a local McDonalds next door to the staffing company I'm interviewing with. Ugh. I swallow my panic.
Curse a few times. And push my way into the building for the interview.
Of course since it is an interview with a Recruiting Company that also does temporary positions - I have to go through the test taking routine and fill out an application - the resume does not suffice, so I have to attempt to remember phone numbers of past employers off the top of my head. Thank heaven they didn't request references. I finish that with less difficulty than expected. Next is the tests. (Sort of praying I could forgoe that, since I'm horrid at tests and the whole experience tends to be somewhat demoralizing.) They have four for me - which are timed, all on the computer, and take me an hour and a half to complete. First up is Excel which starts off easily enough...mostly common sense questions, which you know if you've ever worked in Excel before, then graduates to formulas (ack! haven't done a formula in Excel since Nov and I had it written down), chart manipulation ...ugh. Also there's this nasty question on all three tests about how you do an open icon without a picture. (uhm okay, so how does that work exactly?) Next is powerpoint - which I really have no experience with outside of a brief presentation I created once for my evil boss over two years ago. Surprisingly PowerPoint is pretty straightforward - I did better here than with Excel. Easy program. Then off to Word, which I am familar with, but I don't use it the way this test thinks people do. For instance to create a letter - I don't use letter wizard. And I don't do newsletters or desktop publishing that much. I think I did better with Powerpoint. Next up - the horrible typing test. Yes, I can type.
But I type faster when I am creating something such as this journal entry, not when I am copying something - the dyslexia/visual coordination disablity comes into play in those circumstances.
Ugh. I finish. They collect the tests. They do not, thankfully tell me how I did. (Not sure I wanted to know. These tests do get easier each time you take them by the way.) Then off to the interview - where I discover that the position I applied for is already filled by a more experienced person who can afford to make a permanent career out of a part-time position. But if there are any other openings they will let me know. I leave...limping, because the new blue shoes I chose are too tight and giving me a blister. Make it home. Distract myself by reading Disorderly Knights - which I'm almost finished with by the way and really enjoying. Eat lunch. Read the birthday card from my offline friend in DC who is building a house and getting an article published. Then back on the horse (ie. online job hunt) - reading position ads and applying to them. I think I applied to 10 before I got burnt out and retreated to live journal. Greatly cheered by eliade and herself's entries which seemed to fit my mood to a T.
I honestly think sometimes if it weren't for my online friends, I would go quietly insane. ;-)
A brief thing on Angel - I'm wondering if all the allusions to shells, dealing with the monster within, puppets - may be about Angel finally facing the monster within himself - Angelus and accepting it is a part of him, does inform his actions, and conquering it? Is Angelus a fractual or virus inside Angel or is Angel a fractual or virus inside Angelus? I have further thoughts on this but no time as of yet to flesh them out in some comprehensible form.
Pausing to mourn the passing of Spaulding Gray, a wonderful raconteur who I will miss.
The following is cut to protect the innocent, such as aliera who deserves the loviliest of birthdays.
Oh Horrid day, Horrid day...
You know things are going badly when you reach your job interview and discover that you left the notebook with the resumes and application information at home. I had put the information in my bag, but must have, prior to leaving my dept. taken it out again to retrieve information on where the interview was located, then in my stupidity forgot to put the notebook back in my bag. I discover my mistake in the bathroom at a local McDonalds next door to the staffing company I'm interviewing with. Ugh. I swallow my panic.
Curse a few times. And push my way into the building for the interview.
Of course since it is an interview with a Recruiting Company that also does temporary positions - I have to go through the test taking routine and fill out an application - the resume does not suffice, so I have to attempt to remember phone numbers of past employers off the top of my head. Thank heaven they didn't request references. I finish that with less difficulty than expected. Next is the tests. (Sort of praying I could forgoe that, since I'm horrid at tests and the whole experience tends to be somewhat demoralizing.) They have four for me - which are timed, all on the computer, and take me an hour and a half to complete. First up is Excel which starts off easily enough...mostly common sense questions, which you know if you've ever worked in Excel before, then graduates to formulas (ack! haven't done a formula in Excel since Nov and I had it written down), chart manipulation ...ugh. Also there's this nasty question on all three tests about how you do an open icon without a picture. (uhm okay, so how does that work exactly?) Next is powerpoint - which I really have no experience with outside of a brief presentation I created once for my evil boss over two years ago. Surprisingly PowerPoint is pretty straightforward - I did better here than with Excel. Easy program. Then off to Word, which I am familar with, but I don't use it the way this test thinks people do. For instance to create a letter - I don't use letter wizard. And I don't do newsletters or desktop publishing that much. I think I did better with Powerpoint. Next up - the horrible typing test. Yes, I can type.
But I type faster when I am creating something such as this journal entry, not when I am copying something - the dyslexia/visual coordination disablity comes into play in those circumstances.
Ugh. I finish. They collect the tests. They do not, thankfully tell me how I did. (Not sure I wanted to know. These tests do get easier each time you take them by the way.) Then off to the interview - where I discover that the position I applied for is already filled by a more experienced person who can afford to make a permanent career out of a part-time position. But if there are any other openings they will let me know. I leave...limping, because the new blue shoes I chose are too tight and giving me a blister. Make it home. Distract myself by reading Disorderly Knights - which I'm almost finished with by the way and really enjoying. Eat lunch. Read the birthday card from my offline friend in DC who is building a house and getting an article published. Then back on the horse (ie. online job hunt) - reading position ads and applying to them. I think I applied to 10 before I got burnt out and retreated to live journal. Greatly cheered by eliade and herself's entries which seemed to fit my mood to a T.
I honestly think sometimes if it weren't for my online friends, I would go quietly insane. ;-)
A brief thing on Angel - I'm wondering if all the allusions to shells, dealing with the monster within, puppets - may be about Angel finally facing the monster within himself - Angelus and accepting it is a part of him, does inform his actions, and conquering it? Is Angelus a fractual or virus inside Angel or is Angel a fractual or virus inside Angelus? I have further thoughts on this but no time as of yet to flesh them out in some comprehensible form.
Pausing to mourn the passing of Spaulding Gray, a wonderful raconteur who I will miss.
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And more *hugs* from me. Really hope you all can come up; be nice to chat in person. I think the allusions are conscious (as always and continue to be extremely fond of Joss his crew and their lovely rich brains.) I also meant to link to some of the AtPO posts today; some really good work there and it made my reading last night enjoyable.
Speaking of which have you ever read any John M Ford? He was recced to me last weekish and I'm in the middle of one of his books (very short btw) and really enthralled. Haven't been quite this excited to discover a new author in... well in a very long while.
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020429/interview.shtml
This from a review of his short story collection,
Time is a construction of layers:
Ash and iridium, the rings of trees,
The stone that was a trilobite in mud,
A sphere of light from an exploded star.
History is the draping of the layers
Into a Time that makes some human sense:
Troy is a hill built on seven cities,
The flies in amber are taxonomized.
The past is the interleave of Time and History,
A garment woven for the muse to dance in;
Now modestly drawn close, now flashing us a view
Of something secret that inflames the sense.
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020429/scrabble_with_god.shtml
Really amazing writer (and man) seems to be able to do everything.
Thank you..
The poetry you cite is oddly fitting tonight. I just finished Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnet (have you ever read her? If not, you should - you'd like her I think - her books take place in 16th century Scotland and are filled with Latin phrases, poetry, allusions, and deal with a very ambiguous and dark hero. The one I just completed reminded me a great deal of Angel Season 3 actually and your poetry cite hit a lot of its themes). Dense writer. Requires work, but is rewarding.
I was just thinking tonight how odd it is that we keep repeating our history or elements of it, over and over, and in some ways it feels as if the pattern history takes is not unlike the "fractual pattern" example in morgraine's atpo board post - a repeating pattern, twisting, and weaving backwards. We seem due to emotions to make the same mistakes over and over and over again historically...it's so interesting. I wonder why?
Anyways...yes, I hope to see you in April. If you could come down for a day trip, I'm sure we can come up for one. Maybe we can find a free weekend sometime to come up, when it is warmer? Never been to upstate NY.