Well that settles it

I was waiting for Volkswagen to reveal the new Beetle design, to see if I’d want to trade in my 2002 for something shiny and new.  I was on the verge of trading in last year, when I heard they were discontinuing the New Beetle in favor of developing a car with a “wider appeal”.

Apparently that’s German for: A car men will buy.

See the “original” New Beetle is considered a Chick Car.  Which is fine, seeing as how I’m a girl n’all. And yes, I have flowers in it, and a steering wheel cover with colorful peace symbols and flowers, too. It’s my Hippy Ride.

We kept both Beetles when we picked up the Santa Fe because when you have cars that get you 50 miles per gallon, and you commute 24 miles one way daily, well even I can do that math.

So I waited. I figured heck, it’ll still be the Beetle, right?  They’ve reintroduced the Bulli in Europe (that’s the Microbus us Americans) but so far it’s only in Europe, and it’s an all-electric engine (don’t get me started).

Well last night they made it official.

The New Beetle sucks.

I don’t like it, not one bit.  I think my sister finds it attractive – she might trade her ‘03 next year for one, I dunno. But I personally can’t stand it. It looks like Godzilla stomped on my car. The top is more flattened out, as if someone grabbed the ass of that thing and pulled, stretching it a bit out of shape.  It’s almost as if a Beetle and a PT Cruiser mated, and this is the outcome.

I dunno, maybe this design will appeal to men since that’s what they were going for. But you ask me, I don’t see anything wrong with having a Chick Car. Even marketing it as a Chick Car.  I mean, they have cars designed for and marketed toward Men all the time – they’re called Trucks.  The Scion is for Squares, the Escalade is for the Uber Rich who have only one child. They even have a car now for Hipster Hamsters.

What’s wrong with a Chick Car?

What’s wrong with saying “This car gets 50mpg in diesel, has the most headroom of any vehicle, a Turbo engine, incredible amounts of space, it’s fun to drive and yeah, it’s Cute!”

How do they market a pickup?  They put Marlboro men in one and drive around in the mud at construction sites, dropping wads of metal and dirt in the back and towing things. Doesn’t mean a woman can’t buy a pickup truck if she wants.

Whatevah!

That’s German for Phoey.

What the Frak?!

It is April, right?  Around here the temperature should be in the upper 50’s, low 60’s, with the occasional spurt of sunshine among the cloudy, raining days.

Yesterday, it SNOWED!

Well it hailed, really, although on the car windshield it looked like snow. It actually started to accumulate, enough that I took a picture with my phone and sent it to a friend.

Unfreakin’ believable.  It snowed again this morning in some places around Seattle, but at my house we just had frost on the grass and cars. People who don’t park under cover or in a garage had to scrape some ice.

If we don’t get a Spring by May, I’m gonna be seriously pissed.  We skipped Spring altogether last year, went from a damp, cold Winter into a late, damp, cold Summer somewhere around July 15th.  Never got to plant flowers in the window boxes, never really got anything much to grow outside. My lawn is now 90% moss and 10% grass, which isn’t all that bad, considering. Moss is green and soft and lush in appearance, and it’s a helluva lot easier to mow.

I know we had a really mild Winter, compared to the rest of the country, but that doesn’t mean we have to skip Spring, does it?

April Fool’s Day

Yep, it’s my birthday, and in keeping with tradition, I’m taking the day off work!

I’ll be sleeping in, then spending the day on the couch  with the PS3 on, guilt-free all day.  For those of you unlucky enough not to have been born on April 1st, I give you an LOLcat.

Enjoy.

She’s gonna blow!

OMG I was so bored and lonely today I could have screamed!

I know that sounds lame, but with my sister back to work starting today (hooray!) and the boss out all day, I was literally ALL ALONE.

There’s a bunch of you out there right now rolling your eyes, thinking if you could have had an entire day with no interruptions and no one bothering you, you’d have thought you’d died and gone to heaven.

Well you can f-in’ have it.

More often than not, when I’m at work, I can go all day without seeing another person. Or at best see them only as they pop in to use the FAX machine or ask me to place an order for supplies.  If no one needs in the storeroom, and the boss is out in the field, or off, and it’s quiet on the radio (dispatch radio, not music radio) then it’s not unusual for me to go an entire 8 hours without seeing or speaking to another human being.

There have been times when I’ve gone a full week all alone, with only the briefest of morning human contact.

When my sister was unemployed, she would email me now and then, a little contact with the outside world.  We’d chat about stuff, she’d tell me if anything was happening on the news (since we can’t surf the ‘net here at work unless it’s work related) which is fine, really, that’s what home internet is for.

I’m happier when we have trouble, like a big storm event. Then I’m monitoring pump station alarms throughout the County, dispatching the crews, keeping track of them, working the phones. It’s intense, and crazy, and fantastic, and the days fly by.

It’s just not like that every day.

Don’t get me wrong – I’d much rather have my sister working than sitting at home emailing me.

It’s just lonely.

I can’t write when I’m lonely.

Which is sad, in a pathetic way.

Meaning I’m a little pathetic today.

I’ll probably be a little whiny for a while.  But I’ll get over it.

Really, I will.

W00t!!

YAY, Baby!  She got the job!

Booya!

Starts on Monday.

MONDAY!!

She’s got a job . . . One week after her emergency extension unemployment benefits ended.  7 days after the State of Washington flipped us the finger.  (did you know they can claim the unemployment stats are improving simply because so many people run out of benefits without getting work. If you’re not collecting money, they count you as “no longer unemployed” and get to claim the unemployment rate is improving).  Hell, if they wait long enough, the unemployment rate will be listed as Zero!

But enough of that – – My sister got the job!

Not only does she start work on Monday, but on Monday, I get a return to “Me” time. I get off at 3:30, home by 4:00. She’ll get off at 5:00, home by 5:30.  That means I get me some “Me” time again, to exercise, surf the interwebbies, nap on the couch, use my Playstation, pick lint from between my toes, whatever I want.

Happy Days are Here Again!

Mush

My brain is all too mushy and imploded to post anything intelligent.  My sister’s unemployment benefits have run out, and that was the emergency extension. But she has an all-day “get to know you” interview tomorrow that has us feeling very cautiously upbeat and hopeful.

The horrible tragedy in Japan is beyond comment, but it does put life in perspective, doesn’t it?

Read an eBook week was phenomenally successful and blew me away.

Hopefully I can post more intelligently later this week, and have really good news to deliver. Until then, I offer up an LOL cat for your amusement.

Damn you, Cadbury

Being lactose intolerant, I can only eat small amounts of milk chocolate without getting sick. Depending on the chocolate itself, I can usually go for a while before my tolerance level is reached. Dark chocolate I can eat till the cows come home, as long as it’s good European dark chocolate, and not that wussy American crap they put milk in to appease our wussy American taste buds.

I’m pretty good at avoiding all chocolate, though, because being sick is not my favorite thing in the world, and there are other things I can indulge myself with that don’t contain chocolate at all.

With one exception.

Easter Candy.

This is the one time of year when my will power fails me. When I can’t pass by the bags of Cadbury Chocolate Mini Eggs, Cadbury Cream Eggs, Cadbury Caramel Eggs. When I can’t simply look the other way as I walk by the Whopper’s Malted Milk Eggs or the Brach’s Dark Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Crème Eggs. When the allure of prettily-colored Easter M&M’s call to me and I become weak in the knees. When a simple bag of Licorice Jelly Belly’s isn’t enough to sustain me.

For 11 months out of the year, I can avoid seasonal candies. I can walk right by the chocolate section — even look it over — and walk away with nothing in my shopping cart.

Come Easter, and my iron will turns to mush.

Have you ever noticed how a Cadbury Mini Egg smells?  There’s something about them – it’s as if the creators of Cadbury Chocolates were tea lovers, and understood the importance of smell to taste. Even before you put that extremely creamy and otherworldly-smooth piece of chocolate into your mouth, you can smell the distinctive light delicacy that calls to mind softness and a bright Spring day.

It’s Endorphins in food form.  Legalized valium. Chocolate Nirvana.

Which means hitting the jayne (my gym) on weekends as well as weekdays – salads for dinner more often than not – and a promise that as soon as Easter’s over, everything will be fine.

In the meantime, pass me that Cream Egg, and damn you Cadbury chocolate.

She’s got a ticket to ride

The roller coaster of unemployment is still pluggin’ along. After applying for a few jobs my sister was perfectly suited for – and getting NOTHING in response, I was starting to get seriously angry.

There’s one job for the city, the office is only a mile from our house, that she applied for. There was a lengthy application form to fill out, but we sat down on a weekend and very carefully went over it. She’d taken some free classes at the unemployment office to learn  tips and tricks to writing resumes, cover letters, filling out forms, stuff like that. They taught her about using particular words and how to make sure your resume is custom written for each job description you’re applying for.

Seems like no-brainer stuff, but she learned a lot of little hints that were pretty helpful.

So after spending a weekend working on this application, even going so far as to meet with a former co-worker for lunch who happens to be in the human resources profession who gave us some good advice, she applied for the job.

It closed on February 11th, and naturally we tried to be patient, but all last week we both expected her to get a call for an interview.  She was perfectly qualified for this position, right up her alley, as they say. The office is a mile from our house, so of course we were going over that in our heads – how nice that would be in the summer, she could walk there, there’s a Starbucks between here and there. Winter commuting would be no problem, we figured she could walk and I could take the SUV.

You try not to, but you can’t help it. As soon as you apply for a job, you start to work things out in your head. The commute, the area, what it will be like, the Ins the Outs, the Pros and Cons.

We thought it might have been providence that we even found out about it. They didn’t advertise anywhere except on their own web page (which can be a good thing, or a bad thing). A coworker of mine happened upon the listing out of the blue, and printed it out for me. Minimal listing can be a good thing in that, it means less competition. The fewer people who find out about the opening, the fewer who apply.  Also, it can mean they’re legally required to “open” the job, but they already have someone in mind to fill it.

There’s a chance they’re just not exactly in a rush to fill it, and will take their own sweet time.

But while we wait, and wonder . . . and start to lose hope . . .  Monday evening our other sister calls – – seems a woman she knows had just emailed her and a handful of other friends and contacts about an opening. This woman owns and operates a business and has need of someone to do Billing and manage the office – something my sister used to do and enjoyed. So we sat down immediately that night and poured over her resume, custom wrote a cover letter, then an introductory email wherein we used our sister’s name as reference (since this job wasn’t be advertised publicly, only through friends and contacts) and sent the email Monday evening.

Then we waited.

Tuesday morning, I had the day off so we were sitting around having our morning coffee, preparing for a day of house cleaning and chores, when she got a phone call. It was her – – the woman we’d emailed – – so her and my sister chatted a long while on the phone (I retired to the kitchen so as not to be “in the way”), about her qualifications and the position.  She promised to phone her back and schedule an interview for later this week.

Elated at even this slight glimmer of hope, I took my sister out to lunch, and we ended up doing a bit of shopping on a sunny afternoon.

By the time we got home and started in on our chores, the phone rang again, and before we knew it, my sister had an “informal interview” scheduled for 9:00 this morning.

That meeting went well . . . Very well, in fact, but we’re still strapped in on the ride.  She’ll get a call later (either by Friday or some time next week if the office gets busy) to come in for a more formal, all day interview, where she’ll be asked to spend the entire day going through what would be a regular day with the staff, to see if everyone’s personalities get along.

That’s become more and more typical of interviews, it seems.  Going in for hours to sit with everyone, make sure personalities mesh.  Shouldn’t be a problem, my sister can get along with anyone. She’s very pleasant to be around, and picks up on new jobs really quickly.

So we have hope, at least.

And I’m hoping Fate already emptied his bladder on someone else’s shoe.

Never assume

I had the most ridiculous conversation with someone today, and it’s prompted me to mention, in case anyone’s under a false assumption . . .

I don’t read your Facebook.

Regardless of who you are, I don’t read your Facebook.  There are a few blogs I look at, semi-regularly, and during the week I check my email every evening. But I don’t read your Facebook. (it’s not personal, I don’t read anyone’s)

So if you’ve had a baby recently, gotten a new job, experienced some fantastic news, won the Lotto, lost a limb to a shark attack, grown a third eyeball, bought a new car or sold your house – if you’re writing your memoirs, sold a script, taken to shoving pencils up your left nostril out of frustration – if your family has disowned you or you’ve sold your eldest child to gypsies, if you’ve dropped your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other, you’re considering a career change, bought some new gym equipment, got something waxed, married your parrot.

If you’ve stopped communicating with me because you’re busy posting all of your pertinent information on Facebook – if you start conversations based on the assumption that I’ve been checking your updates every five minutes – if you fail to let me know of some important event because you’d already updated your status – if you’re flying under the assumption that Everyone who’s Anyone already knows Every Little Ever-Lovin’ detail of your day-to-day existence because Everyone who’s Anyone reads your updates and would already know Everything there is to know about YOU, just keep in mind . . . Regardless of who you are . . . if there is something happening in your life that you’d like me to know, you’re gonna have to tell me because . . .

I don’t read your fucking Facebook.