Today I was videotaped -- or at least my arms and hands were -- in a quiet, private room in the basement of my office. I was demonstrating how to make a tricky craft. I made one from start to finish once on Friday and once today, so I had to bring the same clothes I wore Friday. Plus, I was supposed to say what I was doing, but the guy (just a co-worker) taping me was so casual about it, I wasn't really sure if he would use what I was saying or not -- maybe one-fourth of what I was saying was useable, mainly because I was talking to the camera guy the other times, or mumbling to myself about the mistakes I was making, or laughing nervously... Ugh. Anyway, he's going to edit it together somehow. I kept offering to do a voice-over after he was done, but he kept telling me I did fine. Well, it might be fine for him, but I have HIGH STANDARDS.

Hey, it's November! Perhaps I'll try to do the ol' NaBloPoMo or whatever it is. Post a day for the month of November. And they have to be real posts, not Twitter-ish short ones. Let's just see how it goes.

Halloween is over, and I'm going through post-holiday syndrome, where I can't stop looking for things I could use for it even though the holiday is done and my costume is half-disassembled. This year I was A Middle-Aged Woman Who Cannot Wait For Christmas. I had found an excellently tacky Christmas sweater and extremely cringe-worthy Mom jeans at the Salvation Army -- seriously, two different people said, "please never wear those pants again" -- and I borrowed a Santa hat from the prop closet at work. I also had a small strand of battery-operated mini-lights, so I turned those into a necklace. I baked Christmas cookies too, for a prop. It went over well at the show I went to, and I won a set of four classic mini game pens. I only hope my cookies weren't what pushed that drunk girl over the edge and into Barftown, USA.

The day before was Halloween at work, where all of the parents in the office are invited to bring their kids in to do some cubicle-to-cubicle trick or treating. Workers choose whether or not to participate, and if they do, they get a sign and a basket of candy. Since I work with a bunch of bookish nerds, a lot of them dress up for the day -- usually not in full costume, but they'll put on a crazy hat or a wig. I still have my bird costume from 2 years ago, which is essentially just a hoodie with felt fabric-glued onto it, so I decided to wear that. And I wanted to do something to my cubicle, too. I considered finding four big branches and duct-taping them to the corners so I could have a little mini-forest, but that seemed too hard. There happened to be a never-used, still-flat cardboard box nearby my cube, so I stayed late Weds. night and made it into this:



It's a birdhouse! A birdhouse with the added bonus of acting as a door to my cubicle! I got a lot of envious comments from my coworkers, lemme tell ya. It slides to the side to open it, but whenever a person came to my desk to talk to me, they'd just lean over and talk through the hole. In the photo I'm kneeling, which I did throughout the trick or treat thing, and I actually have bruises on my knees now. Corporate-strength berber carpeting is no joke.

I wrote down the costumes the office kids were wearing, just for anthropological interest:
Apollo (the mythological figure)
cowboy
pink bunny
bee
Tinker Bell
dinosaur (2)
classic ghost (2)
Ariel (the little mermaid)
cat
dead bride
headless football player
an "oxymoron" (a dunce cap with ox horns)
crazy clown
Batman (with fancy mechanical wings)
A Bionicle (?)
2 devils
2 Transformers (Optimus Prime and Bumblebee)
turtle
farmer
baby on back of old man
A family with mom: daisy, dad: beekeeper, baby: bee
two renaissance ladies
angel
tiny lion
Lightning McQueen
"girl from the 80s"
skeleton head
candy corn witch
forest fairy girl
Hannah Montana (I assume)
Sponge Bob Squarepants (hand-painted cardboard box)
vampire
gypsy woman
lady bug
Statue of Liberty (a 3-year-old boy)

In other news, we bought tickets to go to Belize in early February. "Fuck the economy," we said, knowing deep in our hearts that my magazine will probably fold before then. (Luckily, there are always going to be crazy people for CJ work with.) More about that later.

Half of doing well at work is knowing when to stick up for what you know is right – and I’m not talking about social justice or anything, I’m talking about tiny design issues and turns of phrase and shit like that – and knowing when to let it go lest you be seen as argumentative and defensive. It’s too bad I was hired right before annual reviews are happening, because I get to skip it this year, and right now everyone’s all impressed and happy with me. A year from now, the bloom will be off the rose, and my review will be full of things like “After a strong start, Debbie grew resistant to change” and “Debbie was eager to learn everything, at first, but we soon noticed that nothing we were attempting to teach her was really sticking.” [Note; nothing like those two phrases have actually appeared in any of my performance reviews.]

Also, apparently my company has switched from a three-step grading system for our reviews (1. You're doing exceptionally well; 2. You're doing an o.k. job; 3. Maybe this job isn't right for you) to a five-step one. Which at first sounded great to all of us, because then we get two whole new shades of gray to fall into. But then the managers were told that there were quotas. And now, out of the entire office of 60 or so people, we're only allowed one or two "1" ratings, and just a few more "2"s, making it pretty much the same kind of deal as before, with the vast majority of us being called Average. Never mind that more than a few of us go "above and beyond" in our jobs, the managers have to grade us all on a curve. It's very discouraging, and the managers are pissed off and dreading doing this. Yet another downside to working in Ginormous MegaCorp. The bureaucracy involved makes me more anarchist by the day.

I seem to be healing just fine. I am even wearing real pants today -- true, they aren't jeans, but then do have a zipper in the front and everything. I have hit the big time.

And, tonight I handed in my big freelance fact-checking project! It is finished! Woo-hoo! I have even been paid. The author is a very nice fellow, a professor and all-around creative smarty-pants. He and his wife fed me each time I went to their beautiful old house in the country to work. After dinner, I went over the suggested fact changes to the manuscript. In the text he had mentioned getting Dictaphone recordings on green plastic discs from his father in the 1950s, and I had discovered that the machine with the green discs was called a SoundScriber -- and as soon as I said the name, he said, "THAT'S IT! Oh my word, I haven't heard that name in years! How did you find that?" Just doing my job, sir. I have powerful Google-fu.

Now I can get back to work on things I want to work on. It's been kind of painful reading my usual crafty blogs without being able to spend any time making stuff myself. No more! Plus, tomorrow it'll be warm enough for me to survey my garden, which I haven't visited since November. I am already planning a bean tepee. Soon I may risk my first bike ride to work of the year, and since I have been entirely sedentary for many weeks, it should be a doozy.

This whole freelance-after-work thing is no joke. The problem lies in that I spend 8 hours in front of a computer, go home, and then attempt to spend another couple of hours in front of a computer. I worked out with Maya on Monday and I think it might have re-flared my carpal issues, so the extra computer work isn't helping.

Did you all know that we Spring Forward this weekend? Madness!

Anyway. I want to leave the computer now. And have a little cereal (at first I spelled that "serial;" I am losing it) and go to bed.

So, how's work? It's great, so far. It's kind of embarrassing how much I am enjoying it. Even being bored there (because I haven't had much to do) feels better than being bored at home. I guess I'm one of those introverts who actually needs to have people around, at least in the background, so I can talk to them when I feel like it. My new cubicle is by a window that faces the parking lot and a brick wall, so I'm considering making it a little nicer somehow. A paper silhouette of a tree? There is nothing alive in sight, and it's a big-ass window. (I do have an easy view of my ex-boyfriend's apartment window, so that's ... special. It was a short relationship and I have no sadness about him, but it's funny that he's Right. There. And will be, 40 hours a week.)

At the same time I'm feeling satisfied, I also feel the occasional twinge of, "Huh... I'm back here again." Like maybe I let myself down by not completely changing careers, or staying freelance. But I don't need to stay here forever, and in the meantime, it's nice to be getting paid, with paid time off (only three weeks, but still).

I will miss the free, poor-person's, state-provided health insurance, though. Man, that was sweet.

P.S. Still missing Maui, though the two inches of show and then the pouring rain I walked through after work today made those sunny memories fade a little.

P.P.S. I now have FOUR cysts, two on each thingy, but the new doctor says there's nothing to do except wait until they go away, or wait until they hurt so much I decide to get them removed laparoscopically. And I think I am now going to stop discussing my lady bits on here. At least for the near future. So just relax, champ.

P.S. I got the job I wanted. Hooray for me!

Hey! Hello. Can we just pretend I didn't go almost two weeks without a post? Because the pressure has become too much. I have thought of things to blog over the past few days, but none of them are worth a long post, so instead I posted nothing.

The situation isn't helped by the fact that nothing terribly interesting has happened -- no interesting anecdotes or funny overheard conversations. I went to an excellent party, saw a couple of great movies (Juno and There Will Be Blood)... I did drive down to Brooklyn at the drop of a hat to help out my sister and brother-in-law, who had a sick baby in the hospital. All I really did was pick up the other kid from school, and entertained said kid while the two adults and baby, freshly back from an overnight stay in the hospital, took a nice nap. Baby is now totally fine.

As for the job thing, I handed in my edit test on Weds. Now I wait for the word. In the meantime, I'm now eligible for unemployment, so I need to take concrete steps towards finding a job -- 3 steps every week, to be exact, or I don't get my pittance from the government. Three is easy. Threasy, I call it. So I am not worried.

So, how did it go?

It went OK.


It's very hard to say. Though I now have more interviewing practice, I still get deer-in-the-headlights brain when I'm actually in one. I ramble, I tend to end every answer by restating the question ("... and that's why I like working with magazines."), I just keep talking if I don't have a good answer... It's terrible to look back on.

I got some good things in there too, though. I described myself, and later when I asked them what they were looking for, one of them used the same words I used to describe myself. And I think I did just OK, not spectacularly, on the edit test (which took 1.5 hours, and was hampered by my hurting stomach). Luckily, there's also an extensive, four-part, take-home edit test that I can hopefully wow them with.

I'm feeling a little desperate about the whole thing, to tell the truth. Why can't they see I'm the perfect person for them? I know I can rock their worlds. "Come on baby, please!" I beg. "You don't have to love me, just let me love you! Why are you looking at those other people?? Only look at me! AT ME!!"


Meanwhile, I managed to drive through the FastPass lane by accident (I was stuck behind a semi) for the first time in my life. I called them, which is what the little yellow light at the toll booth says to do, and they were all, "Um... This JUST happened? Wait until you get a warning in the mail!" Apparently I get one free fuck-up, and the second time, I'd get a $50 fine. Now, this toll booth was for exiting the Pike, and my toll was for zero cents (Western Mass gets to use their section of the Pike for free because we were so thoroughly financially raped with the Big Dig. That's been my understanding, at any rate). So I gotta hang on to the ticket and mail it in so I don't get charged the max amount on it (something like $4). It's too bad I didn't use my "freebie" for a toll which would've actually cost me money.

This is terribly exciting reading, I know.

There's a cool sounding show tonight, but I am feeling too lazy and unwashed to go. I am going to veg out for one more night, I think. Good evening to you all.

It's been a week since I posted, but it's going to have to be a little bit more. My Big Interview is tomorrow afternoon and I'm trying to prepare very, very well for it. I am not super confident. Yet.

First of all, this is my 1,002nd post. So my 1,000 post was this one. A bit boring, I admit. I am still recovering from my NaBloPoMo hangover.

Actually, I'm not really recovering at all. The thinnest veneer of civility is all that stands between me and the kind of unemployed people who watch Maury all day while eating Cheetos in their pajamas. Yesterday I thought about leaving the house, but then I felt cold and my back hurt, so I laid down on the wood floor next to the propane stove and stared out of the window. It was snowing. I stayed like that, lying on the floor not doing anything, for almost an hour. That's pretty much how my whole day was yesterday. (I did take a walk outside after I become disgusted with myself, and I gathered some greenery so I can create a festive holiday display.)

I seem to have lost my job-searching momentum. I've also started waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxious. I just got another cold sore on my nostril. (Stress brings 'em on. Thanks, herpes!) And though I've got nothing but time, I just can't seem to work on those many artistic projects I have going on. Diagnosis: Joblessness-related depression. Not crippling, but certainly hobbling. I am working on this, but it's hard to see one's way out of a rut like this one. I predict the rut will be painfully clear to me once the holidays are over. Hopefully I'll have gotten good news about a job by then, but then I didn't expect to be drifting into a third month of unemployment, so why would the fourth month be an exception?

What I have been doing instead of the above: Mostly, reading stuff online. Metafilter, Gawker, Jezebel, my blog roll on Google Reader. Also, recently, playing Bogglific (i.e. unlicensed Boggle) via Facebook, both with friends and strangers. It's actually pretty cool to be randomly put into a game that has players from Australia, Korea, and Canada in it. It is also humbling to get beaten by people who are obviously not native English speakers. Still: fun times. And it exercises the brain so you don't get Alzheimer's, so I've got that going for me.

Today at a networky lunch, this exchange may have happened:
me: So, I guess I can get your contact info from _____.
potentially career-helping guy: Or I can just contact you through your blog.

The first thing that came into my mind was, Oh shit, my most recent post has the word "cock" in it. (And now here it is again, in this one!) (Which the person might be reading.)

My blog has become post-modern.

Anyway, I went shopping in Hadley today. It was more of a bunch of errands than anything fun, though the problem-solving part of my brain was satisfied with the activity. In Target, I overhead a little boy repeat over and over, "Dad, can we go into the toysssection?" With the drawn-out sounding "s," just like I spelled it. At first I thought, maybe the kid's a little autistic? But then I decided that he was simply saying "toys section." And saying things slightly wrong (or overly-specific) is cute.

I also bought birdseed today, so I can help contribute to the delinquency of the chickadee population in the local wildlife preserve.

Oh SHIT, it's NaBloPoMo. And my blog-slacker sister
is doing it, so I really have no excuse. I just reread some old blog posts from 2003, looking for the 7th-grade diary entries I transcribed (they're in February, if you're interested) and man, I used to blog all the time, plus I was so much funnier and more energetic. What the hell happened? It's kind of depressing.
I have lots of things I could talk about, but a lot of it is personal. And I'm the only one of my friends who lays themselves bare on a blog, so I think part of my problem is Fear of People Not Liking Me. This is an ongoing crisis (see: the previous 5 years of this blog) and one I need to work on. But, like most difficult things I "need to work on," there's always tomorrow to start actually working, if you know what I mean.
Anyway. I'll blog every day for this month, even though I took the weekend off. Here, I'll tell you about my weekend in animals:
I met a very pretty, gray, short-haired dog on the street Friday night, before the Sitting Next To Brian CD release show. The show was fantastic, by the way. We were drifting off to sleep by the end of their set (not the band's fault) so we missed Space Captain.
The next night, CJ and I saw The Darjeerling Limited, which was great, though felt similar to The Life Aquatic. A snake has a cameo role.
Yesterday, after a baby shower at Chandler's Tavern, I drove up to Lenox, where CJ and I went for a short walk at the Audubon place. We turned a corner of a path and saw a beaver slip into a tiny pond. We froze, and the beaver slowly swam in a circle and came back to where it had been before, about ten feet away from us. It lumbered up onto a fallen log and started nibbling on dead leaves. Beavers are very noisy chewers, and when they're standing half-submerged in a pool of still water, the vibrations cause tiny ripples to radiate out from their bodies. It stayed there for a while, then took a small branch in its mouth and swam a few feet away to continue chewing, as if to give us the full Beaver Viewing Experience of swimming, eating, and grasping things with hand-like claws.
This morning on my drive home on the Pike, I saw a couple of guys in orange safety vests standing by the jersey barrier in the middle. As soon as I whizzed past, they dragged a deer carcass across the roadway to the shoulder, each of them holding a rear leg, going as quickly as they could. The deer wasn't mangled at all, it was just dead. I spent the next ten minutes daydreaming about calling the local hunting store to find out if I could pay someone to clean and dress a doe I'd hit with my car (if I ever do, god forbid), or would that be a problem, since I didn't have a deer-hunting license?
And now I'm home, and need to do some interview prep work. Which is difficult, and which is why I haven't started (see what I did there? With the tag-back?). The interview is only rhetorical at this point; I expect it'll be scheduled soon. I hope.

[Update: I did send a revised resume, with a short but funny/mildly-self-deprecating email; the guy wrote me back almost immediately saying not to worry, he hadn't read the previous one yet. Sorry for ignoring your advice, commenters; I went with a former co-worker's opinion.]

Last Thursday, I drove CJ to a CVS to get eye drops and much-needed pain reliever for an eye thing he was going through. I could tell it really hurt because he was kind of trembling and not-talking. While cruising through the parking lot, a big old sedan in front of me suddenly stopped. So, I pulled into the open spot he had just passed, and parked. As CJ and I searched the car for his pain-killing prescription (with increasing distress), a very angry man suddenly knocked at the window. "Do you do that a lot, stealing people's parking spaces!?" I opened the door to be polite and asked him to repeat himself. He did. I said, "Oh, were you going to back into it or something? I didn't know." (By the way, there were plenty of parking spaces. Plenty. And the dick didn't have his blinkers on.) He said something angry to me back, about being careful or something, and how I should watch out and pay attention (I didn't pay attention). He was so furious, so furious at ME. I suddenly got angry, and as he walked away, I said to his back, "You don't have to be an asshole about it." He immediately turned and rushed up to the car saying, "Excuse me? Did I use bad language with you??" I glanced over at CJ, still wincing and fumbling around in the dark for the prescription, and I said, "No, fine, you're right. Have a good night" -- that last bit said with sweetness and only a tiny hint of sarcasm.

After he walked away and the adrenaline rush subsided, I felt like crying. We decided the prescription was not in the car; this was bad, and meant he'd have to just use Advil. As I walked a blind CJ to the CVS, I had to excuse my bad behavior to CJ: see, I used to just turn meek and yielding when confronted with jerks, but now I stand up for myself, maybe a little too much, when I should really be polite but firm. Plus, because CJ had his eyes closed, I felt I had to convince him that I hadn't actually knowingly cut the guy off. (He doesn't know me well enough yet to know I don't pull that crap.) But replaying what had just happened made me feel worse and less-together. I nearly fell apart in the freakin' CVS, and I think it all happened because I'm unemployed.

Here's why: My ego has taken a big hit, which I didn't really expect from being laid off; I don't feel it consciously. I know I'm good at what I do (or used to do). But I am definitely more insecure than I have been in a long time. It's not a good feeling. Nobody's more critical of me than I am. I don't know how to counteract this, except to just be aware of it. I hope I don't end up stripping for cash just to feel better about myself. If you catch me on the pole, please pull me off of it.

Inside CVS, CJ sat in the waiting area while I collected the other stuff he needed. As he occasionally blotted at his teary, shut eyes, and I held his hand and tried to distract him from the pain, I thought I saw the angry guy walking up the aisle. I hoped he saw me, and I hoped he felt guilty.

Shit. I just noticed that I made a typo in my resume -- you know, the resume says I'm detail-oriented and have excellent proofreading skills. The error: I wrote "saavy" instead of "savvy" (neither looks correct to me, to be truthful, but the dictionary says savvy). I sent this resume to my previous workplace, for a job I am desperate to get. So, now the question is, what do I do about it? Hope they don't notice, or send a charming/funny/impressively-brave email fessing up to the mistake? Help me, people.

Warning: This post really could have been multiple Twitters, but I don't want to overload their system.

I'm getting into an unemployed groove over here. Get out of bed at 9:15 or so, eat breakfast in front of the computer, do some job search stuff, eat lunch, then work on refinishing my table (see below) until I can't, read crap online and work on other minor projects, play Turok, make dinner, eat with radio, then upstairs for TV/Turok/more computer time, or out for singing/a show/etc. In bed by midnight. That's the semi-productive life I've been leading.

For lunch yesterday I made an egg sandwich, a mug of tea, and a glass of watered-down unsweetened organic cranberry juice, to which I accidentally added a generous dose of milk. Normally I stop myself before actually pouring the milk into the wrong container, but this time I just filled my glass of juice to the brim with creamy goodness. I might be starting to lose it.

Yesterday was also day two of my furniture stripping project. I'm working on a rough-hewn-looking coffee table that I bought for $20 via Craigslist. It appears to be a knock-off of a fancier, pedigreed table that Pbup had (and probably still has). I'm using a water-soluble stripper, which means it doesn't work all that well, but I don't need to use a ventilator.I also have to scrub the stuff off, hard, so I also get exercise, kind of.

If you've ever wondered where everyone who doesn't work a regular 9-to-5 job goes during the day, I can tell you: WalMart. Twice I've had to go to the dreaded WalMart to get more supplies; the second time, I rode my bike there, and with my messed-up hair and work clothes, I fit right in. I didn't even bother unrolling my right pant leg. I still hate it in there, and their selection is shit, but it is about a mile and a half closer to my house than Foster-Farrar. And if I can't justify going to the cheapest possible store while I'm unemployed, when can I justify it?

I've been reading about salary requirements, and how to handle requests for them, and I just want to point out that the word salary is really weird. If you see it used frequently, it ceases to have any meaning. Salary. Salary salary salary. It's like a salad, and celery, together. I feel it would be better if it were spelled salery.

Doing all of these little projects, and cooking real food, is time-consuming. And I am starting to feel stressed about my lack of income. I am torn between wanting to continue enjoying myself (while still looking for work) and just taking any job at all in order to stretch out my severance pay for as long as I can. And by "any job at all" I mean soul-withering work like temping and data entry. But jeez, I don't really need to be that person, do I? I haven't had to do that kind of work for 12 years. Universe, please give me permission to not be that person. I will repay you by doing the crafty things I've been putting off: finishing my quilt (started, oh, 4 years ago or so) and completing the new scarves and opening an Etsy shop and writing the pitch for that magazine. Amen.

This week has been all about choices.
I could get up and out of bed when my alarm first goes off in the morning. Or I can stay in semi-consciousness for an hour or so, enjoying the warmth of my bed and the cats lying on me.
I could clean the bits of raw chicken out of the kitchen sink strainer, or I could leave them there and let the cats eat them during the night.
I could work on the various art projects I want to create, or I could play Turok: Evolution.
I could get angry at the two loser assholes who won my eBay auctions and then never responded or paid me, or I could shrug it off and get the auctions canceled so I can just redo them.
I could fall into the trap I commonly lay for myself at this stage in a relationship -- where I start saying critical things without thinking, subconsciously trying to push them away and/or test their devotion to me -- or I can try really, really hard to not do that.

This week, I've been choosing the second options.

Unemployment update: So far, not-working is as awesome as you had always feared it might be. It's gorgeous outside, so I might go take a walk around Fitzgerald Lake. Or maybe I'll stay here and read a book. I already sent out a resume today, so I feel like I'm covered. I was advised that I should indulge my need for sleep by not forcing myself to get out of bed at 8 in the morning (I go to bed at midnight), just because I Can, and Why Not? Except I haven't worked on anything arty yet, and I need to. Luckily I have all of tomorrow and Friday free. (And next week, and the week after...)

Anyway, my point is: no panic, no vomiting, no sobbing. And yes, I do think I'll take that walk now, thanks.

Doing the internet personals thing is weird. I've mentioned this before, right? What with all the actual old-fashioned going-out-on-dates one has to do? It's like getting set up on a blind date by your cousin, except your cousin is a poorly-designed web portal who asks a lot of lame questions. At least having to try to explain to a stranger who I am, in an hour or less, has made me much more comfortable in job interviews. And that's a skill I'll need, since tomorrow is my first day of official unemployment.

My to-do list for Monday:

Wake up sobbing
Buy cat food
Apply for unemployment
Have panic attack
Do laundry
Go to Post Office, mail off eBay items
Eat nothing but egg rolls
Look for jobs on craigslist and mediabistro
Stare at the boxes of crap taken from my office
Drink
Make more shrinky-dink earrings for dandie
Water plants
Vomit

And so on. Tuesday should be a little less grim, since a group of recently-canned coworkers are gathering to watch Ugly Betty and eat take-out all day. After that, the future opens up before me as an endless black void. And it's cold out there. So very, very cold.

Getting laid off due to downsizing is kind of nice in the way that getting to be at your own funeral is kind of nice. Sure, you're dead, and therefore no longer an active player in the story of your life (or career). But if you're lucky, like I am, you hear a lot of people saying a lot of genuinely nice things about you that you wouldn't have otherwise heard. You may be surprised at who comes to the funeral; there might be people you thought had forgotten about you. A few people you thought you might see won't show up at all. For the most part, I've felt incredibly supported, both with words of wisdom and with job leads. I still haven't used all of my networking contacts. I might feel differently when my severance pay is about to run out (late January) but for now I feel great. Terrified, but pretty hopeful, and determined to make the most out of this time of forced semi-retirement from the working world.

I am packing up my office. It's weird how little I feel. I mean, I am constantly worried I won't find a job, and that it will be a cold winter, and people will forget about me. At the official farewell party last night I was making jokes about networking with the homeless people who hang out under the railroad bridge, you know, just in case that's what I end up doing. But I'm not yet at the point of despair. A few more weeks of failure has to happen first (I'll let you know, I'm sure). Right now it feels likely that I'll have to take a job that pays less than what I'm getting now, and I'll have to scramble to make extra income to pick up the slack. I don't have an extravagant lifestyle, so it's difficult to find things to cut out of my budget.

Anyway. Onward and upward. Goodbye squarehouse, goodbye mouse. Goodbye people I've worked with for 11 years. It's a lovely day outside and I need a nap.