Well, all righty then. We have lift off and our blog is doing fine in translation. Now to fix those dang blasted links. Bleech. I hate links.

That and the archives, which don't seem to believe that they exist. Which I suppose they kind of don't as they aren't showing up anywhere. ::sigh::

Testing, testing, testing. For some reason, that I hope I've figured out, I can't FTP using my Earthlink sign in and have the entries land on Netscape, where we moved our entries during our situation with being unable to use Blogger on ATTBI.

Are there enough initials in that paragraph for everyone?

Phil came back from 6th grade camp and his room smelled awful even after we washed all his clothes. Chris was waving his air freshener around Phil's room while clamping his nostrils shut. Phil said he couldn't smell anything. "It smells like a dead sea creature, like a crab," I remarked. That's when Phil remembered he brought home an oyster he found at the ocean earlier in the month.

A trip to the unemployment office. It's so odd how standing in a line to speak to someone can be such a demoralizing experience. I went last week to the office in Auburn to enquire about attending school in lieu of looking for work. My limited plan is to retrain as a paralegal.

The woman at the Auburn office barely glanced at me and said, "Come back next Wednesday before 9AM with the course schedules and the man will talk to you then. But come early, cause he only talks to so many people." She was ready to address the person behind me but I said, "You're saying I need to know what classes I should take before I know if I'm eligible for the program? Isn't that a waste of time?" She looked up at me and realized that not only could I speak perfect English, but that I was dressed like an office worker, not a day laborer. With effort, she found a sticky note and jotted down "9AM 4/24" and handed it to me saying that "the man" only saw folks once a week and I'd already missed the cut off for that day. Then she moved on.

This week, it wasn't possible for me to make a pre-9AM meeting in Auburn, as Phil's school starts at 8:30AM and from his school to the Auburn unemployment office is a distance of a half hour. And Phil also had a doctor's appointment at 10:30AM, which would have made me rather impatient and anxious while seeking audience with "the man."

Instead, I drove to the Tacoma unemployment office this morning to see if they have an equivalent of "the man" that I could speak with sooner than next week Wednesday. The Tacoma office is located on one of the streets that are cut into the hillside, parallel to the waterway and near unsavory (but slowly being reclaimed) areas. I parked the Eclipse and was sure I'd never see it again.

The Tacoma office is in a newish building in the middle of its block. I approached the front desk and there were only a couple of men in line before me. Looking around, I felt so out of my element. Women with toddlers clutching them. Untidy men who flipped through the career offerings without reading them. A woman with big hair and overwhelming perfume edged between me and the man in front of me, and thrust herself at the next available clerk. I couldn't even bring myself to explain that she had cut in line, as she seemed to be the matched set of the woman behind the counter and they were soon laughing in loud crow-like howls.

I wanted to be waited on by the other woman behind the counter anyway. She was smiling and cheerful in a helpful way. And when she finished with her customer, she turned to me and beckoned me forward, still smiling.

It seems to me that I have come to a sad place in my day when the smile of a worker whose job *is* to smile at the public all day can knot up my throat. Some days, I feel that everything around me is working its best advantage to make me feel small and unappreciated and exhausted and a smile from a stranger is such a lifeline. Last week when I called the Wall Street Journal to cancel my online subscription, the representative asked me (as is customary when you're calling to cancel something) why I was canceling. "I've been laid off," I said. "Oh, no!" he exclaimed, adding, "I tell you what, I'll cancel your renewal, but I'll bump out the expiration date to July, how's that?" I thanked him, hung up and started to cry.

I explained my need to the smiling clerk and she immediately dug up some forms for me to read and went over them, giving me the phone number of the two men I might need to talk with. Then she handed me another form and said, "I don't think you'll need this one; it's for low income applicants, but you might want to read it anyway."

It's nice to know in a remote way that at least I haven't gotten to where I look like I need low income assistance. Must've been the Jennifer Moore slides from my collection of footware.

I'm having such issues figuring out why ATT Broadband won't work with Blogger. ATT insists it's the fault of Blogger. I wrote them a few times pointing out that I hadn't had trouble before broadband. They haven't responded to my last letter, in which I copied several pages of posts from Blogger's user boards explaining that ATT doesn't allow FTP from a third party, not that Blogger cannot FTP my files.

And to imagine that a year ago, I had no idea what FTP stood for. :)

I'm cranky. I'm tired. There are many things I must do. It's nice to have goals, but it's rotten to have a goal of canceling autowithdrawl from the checking account in case I end up without the money to support the withdrawl. Fortunately, the places I am most likely to have sucked direct from my paycheck are the same ones that offer bill payment on line for free. Always find the silver lining.

What a lovely garden, Corey. I wish I had a camera to take photos of the lovely little daffodils that survived on my back patio.

The little flower pots on the front steps came up nicely -- only the crocuses croaked -- with some grape hyacinths and three bright sunshiney daffodils per pot. There's something else I put in there besides the crocuses but now I can't remember. Irises maybe? A lot of activity for such small space.

On the concrete slab out back are a couple of troughs that Rob bought for me. I dumped the remaining bulbs into them and despaired of them ever coming up. However, a handful of daffodils sprouted and now they are starting to bloom. Rob says they'd do better out front where they'd get sun most of the day but they're too heavy for me to carry out there. I like looking out the kitchen window and seeing them braving the elements on the slab.

I'm planning to move this site from Earthlink to ATT so I can close the Earthlink account.

We will be publishing (although I still have many links to clean up) from this new site. Dunno when the old link will be closed. Fingers crossed! I hope this works!

So much is happening, it makes me tired to think of it. I spend my day jotting to do list notes and then my evenings crossing the items that I've done off that list and transferring un-done stuff to a new list for the next day.

I am sure there are items that aren't making it onto the lists because they haven't occurred to me to do yet.

Phil is going on sixth grade camp from tomorrow through Friday. We spent a lot of time packing for it last night as his bags needed to be at school this morning for transport to the camp itself. A lot of stress might have been avoided if his calls (five of them) had been returned to let him know that items he needed would be available for pick up at his former residence.

I think of all the stuff going on right now, this is what upsets me the most, that my children are being upset. I'm an adult and I usually have the resources to deal with other people's behaviour or lack thereof. My boys don't have the life experiences to be able to explain away or to understand why someone would act this way to them.

So when I took them to church on Sunday, their stepmother did not show up for their normal service. Instead, we hunted her down in a Sunday school room and I encouraged both boys to stop in to speak with her. They had not seen her since the prior Sunday when she came to pick them up but left without them. Chris was especially upset as she brought with her quite a few of his personal possessions (which her son and I transferred from their car to mine) and then asked if he wanted to move "home." More of his personal items were delivered to the church that night where he attended his usual youth group, prompting him to ask me if she was trying to get rid of any evidence he exists because he didn't answer her question with a "yes."

My heart breaks for my cherubs, who are torn between what they've been used to and what they have now with me. They miss their neighborhood friends and their father. They aren't used to living with me. We have to get up at 6AM (and believe me, this is more a chore for me as I'm losing sleep both in the middle of the night and with this early wake up call) so that I can drive them to their familiar schools. Rob has never had children so it's probably an adjustment for him.

And then the job situation. I've never been unemployed via lay off before. It's weird to say it and weird to think of it. I've applied for several jobs but I know that whatever happens, I'll be making significantly less money as I intend to work closer to home.

Wow. I've just been laid off. It is a very odd feeling. My whole department, including our coworkers in Los Angeles and Denver, are being escorted out of the building. As I'm on vacation this week, I missed the impact of the HR person coming in to announce this change and the ceremonial removal of our office equipment.

Gee, and I have some addresses in my contacts list there that I'll wish I'd kept too. Not to mention some game documentation on the harddrive that I'll not be able to retrieve. Rats.

If this has to happen, at least it's happening now when I need to be home to take care of things. Still, it's a surprise and shock. Er, anyone willing to write me a job reference? :)

I now have two full-time cherubs living with me. :)

Men.

A Rebuttal. :-)

When he left for his little trip to Kentucky, a hotbed of government agency knowledge and testing, I asked when he'd be coming back. He said he didn't know, but sometime late Saturday. I asked, "Night?" and he nodded but didn't know what flight number it was.

Now, previously, Linda from work had invited me and Rob to go hiking with her and her church group, their first big hike of the year. I was going to take Rob and the cherubs and spend the day in the mountains of Issaquah together with my coworker and some of her buddies. Since Rob was going to be away (he planned this trip just last week, probably when the idea of hiking on a Saturday morning struck him as a bad idea and the only way to graciously back out was to blame work) it was just me and the cherubs.

The hike was pretty strenuous, actually, and I'm not sure if Rob would have enjoyed the return portion which was pretty steeply downhill. The boys and I had a good time though, pausing to buy something more exciting than tap water on the way home. There's something about strenuous physical activity that calls for corn syrup-based drinks. :-)

We returned home to find Rob languishing. Our jaws dropped. I apologized for keeping him waiting, but wasn't he supposed to arrive much later in the day -- like, at night? Rob grumbled something in return and despite my best efforts to feed him, he grumbled all the way to the bedroom where he then took a long nap. All I could get from him till then was stuff about drinking heavily and starting a bar fight by pouring beer down the back of some poor young girl's low-rider jeans.

And so, I say again. Men! :-)

Rabid Sheep updates his journal! TWO days in a row! Be still my snickering heart! :D

One of my GMs noticed a bug with the experience system and did a game-wide announcement advising folks that the error would correct itself and restore their missing 500 experience points the next time they checked their EXP using the EXI verb.

Half the game, including all the Hosts, logged off.

My staff consists of some funny people.

Rob and I walked down to Liz's house this past Saturday to pick up my car. When Liz needs to leave the office early on the weeks she drives us both in, I'll catch the bus home and Rob and I will go get the car later on. Since we're trying to be relatively healthy, we walked. I told Rob it was little more than 2 miles from our place to hers, most of it downhill. And so it is. After all, 3.1 miles is more than two miles and other than the uphill stretch from the boardwalk to her house, it is downhill from where we live. So there. :)

Sunday we went to see Lord of the Rings again before it leaves the theaters. This time, since there weren't too many folks sitting around us, Rob took the opportunity to talk to me during the film. I stopped glancing at him because I was afraid it would ellicit another zinger about something.

For example, recall when Bilbo catches sight of the Ring when Frodo's going to try on the mithril shirt? Bilbo lunges for Frodo, his face contorted into an orc-like visage. Rob leans over to whisper, "Hmm! Looks like Frodo was trying to grab a box of Hamburger Helper!"

Irregular readers will want to refer to this episode.

And now, more wrestling with reallocation. I printed out the related documents but events of last week rendered me unable to sit down and read through them thoroughly.

Hugs to Broos and Suz and Corey and all :)