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I don't even know if they're still on television in Kelowna or not, but check out this CHBC coverage of the 1994 Canucks riot. Pat Kennedy and Rick Webber were so damn young, and check out taht facial hair, it's pure Anchorman [wp].
I'm watching my second episode of HBO's mini-series John Adams at the moment. It's the third episode of the show, but I missed the first one, and after last week's I'm extremely excited for this. It is certainly the best drama on the American Independence that I've seen, and I've seen quite a few. There are advantages of being able to tell the story in seven hours that one does not have in a typical Hollywood movie.
It's been awhile since my university courses that covered the American Revolution, so my History Sense might be a little off but I've yet to see any glaring mistakes. I do question whether Jefferson would have spoke out against slavery as he did in last episode, while continuing to own slaves of his own. However having said that views on slavery at the time were often confused and contradictory, so I'm not going to make a hard and fast claim that it was an error.
Rather than doing a review I thought I'd add in a few random thoughts that occur to me as I'm watching the episode. Note this is the third episode entitled "Don't Tread On Me" that is meant to cover Adams' time in France trying to gain support from Europe for the Revolution.
- It is very convenient that everyone addresses everyone else by their names during this time period. Having missed the first episode I was worried that I'd be a bit lost to start off last week, but found that since everyone was addressed in this manner it was easy to follow. This technique would fail miserably on a show like The Sopranos, where it would feel so much less natural that everyone talks in this slightly stilted and formal manner.
- I'm very glad that many of even the American characters have English, Irish and other accents. Often there's a tendency in Hollywood to have all the Revolutionary figures sound as American as possible, forgetting that during the Revolution everyone was actually English. Here there are English actors in many roles and Ben Franklin is played by Tom Wilkinson.
- On a related note it's nice to see that these people are flawed. Popular figures in the Revolution tend to get painted larger than life, and almost deified. These people argue, have flaws and are so much more interesting for it.
- The French were weirder then than they are now. Hard to believe, but yeah.
- If there was any doubt that Paul Giamatti is a great actor this should put it to rest. I was not a huge fan of Sideways, but he keeps proving himself again and again and this could be his defining role. Or would be if it weren't a historical drama on HBO.
- Back then it was easy to invent shit. Seriously Thomas Jefferson makes a chair that swivels and he's a genius. Franklin invented pretty much everything else during his life. Can you imagine President Bush, either one, inventing anything? Clinton? Kennedy?
I've been hard on my iPhone since getting it. I've dropped it half a dozen times and it's bounced back from every knock and bump that I've managed to inflict on it until last Wednesday. While rushing to get out of my car in the Metrotown parking lot I let it slip out of my hand and it fell face first on the hard concrete ground. Having dropped it before I was not worried, until I actually looked at the screen.
There is now a portion of cracked glass on the top left corner of the screen, as well there is a large crack running across the screen from that top corner across to the right centre of the screen. It's a hard thing to capture in pictures, but it's pretty ghastly looking. Amazingly enough the touch screen still works, and every other feature of the phone seems fine. Lydia's worried that I'm going to cut my face on the cracked glass, but I don't think that's much of a danger.
At work we refer customers to a guy in Richmond to get their phones fixed, and I've used him before when I locked up my iPhone's software. He's quoted me $180 to fix the screen, and since I paid for the phone with my Visa card I'm trying to get them to pay for the repair under their purchase insurance that they offer. So ideally the repair will be free, but I'll have to see how well Visa honours that.
I've been thinking about switching back to my BlackBerry until I get the phone fixed, but after having an iPhone it's really hard to go back. The idea of not having the internet on me at all times, and having to have both an iPod and a cellular phone seems to be almost a hardship. Granted it's one of those pathetic middle class hardships that don't really matter in the real world, but it's there still.
Hopefully Visa will be standup guys and gals and fix this for me.
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I've been Twittering for awhile [twt], and you can read my most recent posts at the right hand sidebar, but I don't really know anyone on Twitter. Sure it's cool that I can see what Warren Ellis [wp] or Wil Wheaton [wp] are posting about, but apart from Rebecca Bollwitt who I know from Metroblogging Vancouver [m604], it's not like I've ever met any of these people, or are likely to meet them.
Lydia is freshly impressed with it because one of her blog reads Dooce is using the service [dc], but I think people still find it a bit weird and confusing or as I like to say weifusing. What do you do with it? It's probably more useful if you're actually communicating with people, and not just using it to short brief up dates about riding the Skytrain on your blog's sidebar.
Imagine if you will a scenario where my job has projects which I need to work with others on, say like we're making a new widget that will cure scurvy. We'll call this device the Scurvy-Away-Device (SAD for short). I can Twitter to someone "Hey the SAD lit itself on fire tonight, do you think maybe we can make it run on batteries and not babies?" They could then Twitter back, "No. Babies are tax deductible." I could then Twitter back, "I don't think you quite understand tax law."
It's just like email, except with space limitations. And you can read the email of Patrick Wilson of Weezer [twt].
Not convinced? Well it's an enjoyable way to read the thoughts of some funny people, and it has the same enjoyment factor of a blog but it's actually much easier to follow lots of people on Twitter since by its nature they're having to be brief, unlike I'm being here.
Did you know: the first people were thought to be vampires because they recoiled from the sun, were just really hung over.
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Did you know: penny loafers and tennis shoes are natural enemies, and that is why it looks awkward when you wear one of each instead of a complete pair of shoes.
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It's rare that I get a day off with nothing to do. Since my days off sync up with Lydia's it generally means that I have to, you know, do things. Things that require pants, showers and leaving the apartment. Our plans never include sleeping in late, moving to the couch for two hours of recorded Smallville followed by about three hours of recorded The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.
I'd been stockpiling television for weeks now, never quite having the time to watch the episodes until now. That meant an episode of The Celebrity Apprentice went before the tales of a young Clark Kent.
Isn't Piers Morgan the greatest reality contest ever? He certainly is the most qualified person ever to compete on The Apprentice. Granted I can't imagine him doing the physical challenges on Survivor, or being America's Next Top Model, but for an outright schemer he's fun. I'm very glad he's in the final two.
Easter is an odd holiday once you're older than twelve, or whatever the non-egg gathering age is in your house. If you're not particularly religious and don't have kids it leaves you with nothing but trying to avoid sermons on television. With Christmas there's still a gift exchange with friends or family, with Easter there's what, parasols?
I didn't actually shower and get prepared to leave the apartment until about ten at night, when I started to get ready to go and get Lydia who unlike me was working. On one of her late night shifts she was working the 3 - 11 shift at the hostel and it was my fianceely (not a word) duty to pick her up and bring her back to the apartment for cheese sandwiches and Medium and then a third season episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on DVD. It's the prom episode, which isn't exactly the most romantic thing ever.
Still we press on. Tomorrow is a new day. A working day. A day with showers, pants and clean ears. Tomorrow the PVR machine will record, instead of playback.
Did you know: lawyers are actually genetically closer to humans than snakes? How lawyers became known as snakes in popular lore is still unclear, but clearly it was before the advent of vigorous study of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of various creatures in myths.
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If you've been reading the last few months you know that I've been looking for a new job the last few months. Recently I've made progress on three jobs that I really was excited for, and I felt that I was in a good position to actually snare at least one of those. In fact in my feverish dreams I was imagining a scenario where I had to choose between three great jobs.
Feverish dreams are best left to revenge and doubt.
After two interviews which I felt went really strongly I'm left with one offer of a part time job, one job where I haven't heard back despite assurances that the hiring was going to be done extremely quickly and one interview still looming in April.
Though it was not quite the ideal situation I did take the offer of a part time job at Elfsar [es] a comic book store in Yaletown where I get my books every week. It's a great store, and the pay is actually better than you're thinking it is right now in your mind. Yes that number you're thinking, it's better than that. The trouble is at part time I'm still staying with my current job, and the hourly part time rate is less than the full time rate.
Still with comic books the bulk of my monthly entertainment expenses the generous staff discount will be quite a savings. Further the extra money is going to be handy what with the big wedding expenses looming down the road like a Jack Kirby Celestial [wp]. I always enjoyed my shifts at the Capitol Theatre in Westbank which I did while at university while working at the paper and Pacific Cellular. It was not exactly a rest, but it was a nice reminder that work can be fun. Hopefully Elfsar is a similar boost.
Plus hey, I've never had a real job where I can wear jeans and a t-shirt. That'll some kind of wonderful.
Did you know: if you try to make Jell-O snacks in your toilet it will be incredibly unsanitary?
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From Garfield Minus Garfield [gmg]
Apparently there's nothing like an engagement announcement [jks] to boost traffic, and incoming phone calls. I don't know if anyone who actually works at the store I do knows, though it feels like the entire corporate sales team has called to offer their congratulations. Which I suppose goes to show you that my brother whose in corporate sales spends more time talking about my life at work than I do. He probably talks about pretty much everything a lot more than I do, since he got the vocal chords and lungs whereas I got the good looks and wilily smarts.
Lydia blogged about our engagement a day after I did [ls], and quickly had several more comments than I got. I'm putting it down to the fact that girls are far more impressed with this sort of thing, rather than that her blog is more widely read amongst her friends. She probably also does have more friends than I am, since unlike me she doesn't make her companions sign a loyalty pledge.
Why get married, you might be asking. Well apart from the fact that I'm totally in love with her, and can't think of anyone else I'd rather spend the rest of my life with, it does help me prevent from turning into the total middle aged loser that John Arbuckle from the Garfield comic strip is.
The wedding planning has begun in earnest. We're trying to decide between having the wedding in Vancouver or Kelowna. Vancouver is easier for planning, since that's where we are most of the time, while Kelowna is easier since my parents' house can act as a wedding venue. Also Kelowna during the spring/summer almost guarantees dryness whereas Vancouver is far more touch and go weather wise.
There is also the question of the engagement ring. For months Lydia sent me mixed messages about whether she wanted an engagement ring. Sometimes she wanted a pearl one, sometimes one with diamonds, sometimes no ring. So instead I bought her an iPod touch, which I figure has far more features than any ring. Of course apparently that's not the point of a ring, so we're looking to get one. We've been looking, or rather she has, at rings in the States since they're apparently quite a bit cheaper. If anyone has anything they're trying to pawn, possibly made of white gold with pearls, please shoot me an email.
If you've known me for awhile you probably remember the single days. The long, long, single days. In fact you just have to take a look at this blog's "Being Single / Dating" category [jks] to see the last few single years. In fact back in university I had thought that I could somehow spin my single-dom into a career, since people seemed to enjoy reading articles of my disastrous romantic adventures [teotw].
Lydia and I have been going out pretty much since we first met after she responded to an ad that I put up on Craigslist. The ad was put up very much in the spirit of, "Well if this doesn't work out at least I'll have something to write about" and so that it actually worked and I've gotten a long term relationship out of it is very surprising to me. Delightfully surprising.
Last week the two of us went down to Seattle for her birthday and had dinner at The Dahlia Lounge [td], where after the "Cougar Gold, fried green tomatoes, Bavarian beer vinegar, mustard" appetizer was cleared I asked her to marry me and much to my relief she said yes. So we are now officially, though currently ring-lessly, engaged.
It's been just over a week, but I've wanted to keep it quiet because my parents were on a cruise in Asia and I wanted to tell our folks before we let anyone else into the secret. Last night I surprised the family with it, and Lydia told her mother over the phone, so now that all the one degrees know, we're letting other people in on it.
So yeah, I'm getting married. On April 21st.
Just kidding. Probably next spring or summer depending on a few factors.
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It's been well over a year that I've been debating getting a dog [jks]. At the time I was informed by Ryan that not only would any dog I try to raise end up as a puppy juvenile delinquent, it would either end up assassinating a world leader or taking its own life in some kind of weird Michael Hutchence [wp] manner.
I had planned to sue for libel, but figured he was either protected by the opinion defence or the truth defence and decided not to call my lawyers.
However I've continued to think about a dog. The obstacles still remain, the fact that the days that I work I'm away from the apartment for slightly over nine hours between the eight hour shift and travel is the major roadblock. The other being cost, which in of itself isn't much of a problem unless I'm having to pay an extra $20 a day on top of food, vet, toys, training and medicines. I could probably convince Lydia to swing by the apartment after she finishes work, which is generally around 3 pm and about two hours into my shift, but it's an inelegant solution.
Can dogs be trained to take themselves out, also possibly do chores around my apartment while I'm gone working with Roomba to get everything clean for when I return? If I get a small dog like a Boston terrier [wp] I suppose they might have trouble selecting the right floor in the elevator.
Back to the drawing board.
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Last night instead of prepping for my job interview this morning I got occupied by goofing about in Photoshop and I ended up making a new banner for the blog. We've had a few different banners but I figured that it might be worth taking a look at a few of the most recent ones.
This is the current header for the blog. It's taken from this picture that I shot in the Seattle Public Library [fkr] and run through a Photoshop filter.
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This one was fairly easy, I just cropped a picture of The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus from Marvel and put text on it.
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This is some seaweed that I took a picture of in Tofino. As with the next banner I liked how the white blended in with the blog's background colour.
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This was a picture I took of A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers during their last show at the Commodore. The picture turned out looking pretty cool, as though it had been Photoshopped, so all I did was crop it. Sometime terrible mistakes can end up as something neat.
I'm trying very hard to come up with something to blog at this point. Following the Mr. Rawson school of forced free writing never ends up with anything readable, and certainly nothing that you want to submit to a(n) (potential) audiance of millions. In fact during the ten minutes of free writing every class I tended to just fill my workbook with the phrase, "I am free. I am being forced to write." It was meant to be ironic, in that way that we can achieve irony at 17.
I suppose to make this a better blog I need some drama or adventure in my life. Another trip, for example, to compete with last year's travel to Europe. Something quite facinating and new so I can dazzle you with photographs and tales of eating weird food in dodgey resturants. Instead I have pictures of the inside of the Skytrain, as I commute to and from Metrotown every day.
Which is not to say that life is boring, or dull. I watched Bee Movie last night and it was pretty good. However the fact that you're reading about me watching Bee Movie is a sign that perhaps I'm not leading the sort of heroic life that is worthy of great study. Perhaps I should join Jason and search after the Golden Fleece [wp]. I'm sure such a journey would provide many chances for good pictures and many meals of weird food in dodgey resturants. At the very least Mysia should be interesting.
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This following exchange took place via email between Nathan Carter and myself.
From: Nathan Carter
To: Jeffery Simpson
Subject: A Nidea
Hi Kelly
If we ever form another Rock Band band, we should call it "The Grade Ten Birds"
Hugs,
Nathan
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From: Jeffery
To: Nathan
Subject: Re: A Nidea
Ha ha.
Or Dr. Pants and His Lonely Flute Section.
Sent from my iPhone
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From: Nathan
To: Jeffery
Subject: Re: A Nidea
That's a very poignant and filthy name, sir. I enjoy it.
Someone from the "internet", someone whose eBay feedback explains
exactly how long I had to wait for shipping, is offering me money in a
bid to buy his reputation back with the removal of my feedback (Oh no!
He's only at 99.3% positive). No-one buys my love!
Or how about: "Miles Kilometers and The Way Home"
Nathaaka
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From: Jeffery
To: Nathan
Subject: Re: A Nidea
"Miles Kilometers and The Way Home"
That's an album title you sick bastard. How dare you attempt to trick me into giving a band an album name. Imagine if U2 were instead named The Joshua Trees or the Under A Blood Red Skies? It would be foolish and nobody would know who Bono was and he'd have never been able to save Africa with his smile.
If you keep this shit up we might have to dissolve our friendship and start a new relationship as enemies.
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From: Nathan
To: Jeffery
Subject: Re: A Nidea
Perhaps we are up against a brain anomaly. The Way Home. You're
right, that rings a bell. Whose album be it? Unless you're serious
about initiating enmity, I suggest continuing friendship and an
amended name: "Miles Kilometers and the Roasted Hopes"
Captain Dander
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From: Jeffery
To: Nathan
Subject: Re: A Nidea
Gak. You must be a brain anomaly. I think we call in Gene Rodenberry and get him to write an episode of Star Trek based on your inability to concieve the difference between a band name and an album title. "Miles Kilometers and The Way Home" is clearly an album title. It is not, to my keen ken, a currently existing album title but it is indeed an album title. It has that vibe.
I do not want to dissolve our friendship like so many slugs under salt in a White Rock backyard, but you are forcing my hand with your ninny-ness.
Look. I've had to do this to prove you wrong. Here are some band names and some album titles that I've made up.
Band Names:
Rocket Red and the Glory Wheels
The Dreamers
Vampire
88 Keys
The Lovers of Paper
Album Titles:
'Round Aboot Here
Until the Squids Came Home
Crab Pot Sickness
Aligator Al Runs My Pawn Shop
Fuck You It's Broked
Are you clear now?
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From: Nathan
To: Jeffery
Subject: Re: A Nidea
Crab Pot Sickness it is. Now i'm the one convinced, and you're the
one being painted as a brain-deficient anomaly - I'm at least 60% sure
there's something (someone's band) called "The Way Home". I will
prove it one day and make you sick with envy! I'll make you sick with
crab pots! I'll make you eat that snake and ladder!
Be sweet
Be kind,
Cue the cheering(booing) children,
I'm listening to reggae
Nathan
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From: Jeffery
To: Nathan
Subject: Re: A Nidea
You talk a retribution like you're a reader of the Old Testament. My God is a micro-biotic God, not a fire/brimstone God. If I wanted that old tyme vengeance vibe I would have stayed settled with Zeus. Now there was a god who knew a good vengeance tip.
Did I tell you about the time Zeus, Jeff Weston and I went to the faux-Commonwealth debates at UBC when we were in high school? Jeff was reading up on Noam Chompsky, who he would later engrave in marble for the oracles, while Zeus and I were trying to figure out what the major concerns of the Solomon Islands were. My gosh, what a speaker he was that Zeus. Once he got on roll it was like he shot lightening from his teeth. He did not, at least not during the conference since it would have been out of character for the tiny island nation to do so.
The point is my dear friend, and I use that term as loosely as I use the term "faux-Commonwealth", that your attempt at verbal judo will not fool me. You try to reverse or positions with a quick flick of your hip, and all you end up doing is making me mad. I've been around the Model UN and I find it much too small to fit any real ambassadors in. Those plastic people you've glued around the outside to represent scale will hardly be able to negotiate the sort of long lasting trade deals that your nation expects of you.
I have seen all of your moves. I rate you 4 out of 5.3. It is an odd sort of scale, but it's all about keeping the metric and imperial conversions clean.
I love you like a retarded frog I once caught in a muddy swamp in White Rock. Or rather not love, but if I had you in a jar I'd feed you some flies and punch holes in the top. It only seems fair.
Take care of my stalks while they're growing. Though that's not an invitation for more horseshit.
- Frank Mahovlich
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From: Nathan
To: Jeffery
Subject: Re: A Nidea
Dr. Feelgood
That was probably the funniest email I've received in about five
years. I think the point at which my bile rose the highest in protest
was when you say "I love you like a retarded frog..." End quote.
That pretty much frosts (with malice) the cake of your dispassions.
Frogs are rare. Frogs are precious. I am from White Rock.
Remind me who Zeus is. I have narrowed the list to Johannes, Michelle
(most probably), and Dane Bird. The Grade Ten Bird. Zeus, the real
Zeus, the one we clubbed with in Olympus (remember?), had nothing of
fire/brimstone/vengeance. The most Zeus had was turbo-whim, and that
while topless (!!) and his hurling electricity was never pleasing to
him - he's said repeatedly that he regretted it. His waxed chest
betrayed his need to please. Besides, he had competition, and could
be tricked into incest, or replacing the distributor even though there
was nothing wrong with it.
Have you read much Chomsky? I've read a fair amount. And I must say
this. I used to love him. His writing is very hard to read. It's
dense, and footnoted like there was a panel of celebrity judges.
There is actually only a pamphlet's worth of text in Manufacturing
Consent, and the rest is text-length citations of U.N. resolution
wording, Presidential speeches, obscure scholars of eastern european
historical conflict, and Woody Allen's most memorable nocturnal
mumblings.
If there were one person left on a tiny island nation, would that
person automatically be his own UN representative? Would there be
allegations of human rights abuses if he weren't properly groomed?
Could he declare war on Mauritania and then hide for 3 years? Or is
it more likely that the last person would sit on his tiny beach, with
his tiny tattered shorts, tossing stones into the sea and crying
softly to himself? I say we annex him. I say we sell him to
seagulls.
My swamp, your jar with or without holes, my hibernatory mud cave, the
centre of the sun: It matters not.
Bernard Callebaut
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From: Jeffery
To: Nathan
Subject: Re: A Nidea
Dear Black Cauldron:
Zeus = Dane Bird?
Zeus = Michelle Smith?
Zeus = Johannes Saufer?
Your knowledge of my back catalouge is shaky at best. I suggest you pay closer attention to my autobiography "Fashioning The Senses" and less to your so called studies. Or read my blog which is located at www.jefferysimpson.net. Also I have to say that I will be sharing your ignorance with my adoring public, they have a right to know what sort of free range fowl that I associate with.
You ask questions so I will give you answers like a rabbit stealing eggs and then re-distributing them on Easter like some insane animal kingdom Robin Hood. Or Lenin.
Zeus = Aaron Peck.
Yes I have read some Noam Chompsky. Largely in comic form thanks to Jeffrey Weston's cartoons. I find that most great philosophers are best in comic strip form which is why I asked for the compelete collection of the writings of John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes as related by a young boy and his stuffed tiger.
Be wary. I must now take out the trash. When I return I expect an apology and possibly some sort of smallish baked dish to demonstrate my dominance over you in the area of wishing on falling stars. I wish but good.
- Pony Boy
If I still had the weekly gig with eVent! I know what I'd have written about last night, it would be the news that Trent Reznor's new album(s) from Nine Inch Nails Ghosts I-IV made him around $1.6 million dollars in the first week of release [wm]. Radiohead were the first big group that I listen to who did a no-label internet release and they've been secretive about how much they made, but Reznor the man behind Nine Inch Nails has been much more open about how much he's managed to make.
Over the last few years it's been sort of accepted that if you're okay with simply making a living with music, you probably did not need a record label. Someone like Jonathan Coulton has been able to make a decent living playing to his niche but there's was a lot of doubt as to whether a major artist could manage to make the sort of money they were used to making with a major label, if they went on their own. It's been a long time since Nine Inch Nails was a top tier act, probably since 1994's The Downward Spiral [wp] but they're a well respected group with a avid fan-base. Reznor's albums sell fairly well, but there's no way that was getting the sort of money from Universal (his old label) that he got from doing this.
Now it's important to point out that Reznor made one of the four albums available for download for free, and that the rest of the tracks were on bit torrent sites just like any other album. People stole these discs, got them for free and yet he still made money on them. The mantra of the labels like Universal that you are stealing their music (I mean you clearly have an internet connection you must be a pirate) and that's what's affecting record sales is completely bogus. Yeah some people steal music, and don't pay for it. Maybe some people who before the internet would have bought the album downloaded it without paying, but music fans do in large part believe that their favourite artists deserve to make money from their music.
I paid $10 through NIN.com [nin] for the full four album downloads plus a fancy .pdf formatted liner notes. The equivalent through the iTunes music store would have been about $40, and truthfully I would have paid that being a NIN fan since Ryan Corbett introduced me to them on the grade eleven band trip. Back then I had girl issues that needed angry techno/industrial music to deal with properly and now though I'm fully healed, and have a girlfriend to boot [ls], I still enjoy the NIN. Instead though I got for an amazing price, the money all went to the artist and it's not in the iTunes DRM cage which means I can make ringtones out of it.
The advantage a band with a strong fan-base like NIN has is that the marketing is largely taken care of. I first saw mention of Ghosts I-IV on Wil Wheaton's Twitter stream [ww], though I didn't know what he was talking about. Bit by bit I saw more of the people I follow on Twitter mention listening to "Ghosts" and eventually I turned to Google to figure out what they were talking about. A few short minutes later and I was on NIN's site downloading the album, and word-of-mouth-marketing had another victory and Trent Reznor had $10 of my dollars, not the $2 he would have had had I paid $50 for the album at the local HMV.
Though their niche is a lot bigger than someone like Jonathan Coulton, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are still niche artists. I'm really looking forward to the days when a major artist, a U2 for example, figures out that they could be making the music they want to be with no label interference and be making more money if they just cut the strings and forged their own path without a major label.
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I've been a despairing about finding a few job for the last few months, and it's been a real dry spell for work in that regard. With websites like Monster it sometimes feels as if I'm just submitting my resume was the equivalent of throwing a coin down a well and wishing for a job. I knew it was out there, but if you're not physically handing it to anyone you're never sure if anybody is actually looking at it. The few bites I did get always turned out to be companies like Primerica which were pavement pounding sales jobs. If I wanted to be doing sales I'd be staying where I am now.
Recently though things have picked up, so much so that I'm no longer looking at theatre management as a serious career option. Indeed I'm actually looking at jobs that I'd really enjoy. I am wary of jinxing anything by talking about it too early, but I had a really good interview today with Seon Design Inc. [sd] for a media coordinator type job. They make surveillance systems for trains, buses and elevators and I'd be doing their advertising copy, helping set up for a few trade show style events and doing press releases.
I'm almost worried about a wealth of choice, having to pick between three different options. I'm also worried about winning the 6/49 and how that might change me as a person. Would I still be the sweet and caring person I am now if I had enough money to buy a solid gold statue in my own honour? These questions plague my dreams, though admittedly they're much more pleasant nightmares than the one about the chalk outline lion that comes from the oven to eat me. I understand the words "chalk outline lion" might confuse you, do not worry it is for the best that you do not go too deep into my inner mind's working.
All that is left to say is, "Wish me luck." I for one will be keeping my toes cross until such time as they become numb from lack of blood flow and begin to get gangrene.
I didn't bring my Macbook to Seattle for the three day weekend, despite the fact that the hotel has free Wi-Fi and thus would be perfect for blogging on the move. Instead I decided to see if I could go with just the iPhone as my portal to the internet.
So far it is going fine. I admit aside from this short post and some Twitter action (look on the right hand sidebar) I haven't done much. While my blog service TypePad has a nice iPhone interface I've not wanted to screw around trying to post to Vancouver Metblogs. Not that I've even been in Vancouver.
Today for lunch we went to the Crab Pot down on one of the Piers where Seattle meets the sea. Large wooden mallets were involved and we both enjoyed the seafood. Then we trucked around Pike Place Market.
Tonight we go to the Dahlia Lounge for Lydia's birthday dinner.
Nothing much to report, and so this is a quick post. However I've got two job prospects on the go, both of which are to the actually speaking with someone who is flesh and blood and not a computerized resume sorter stage. All of which is a positive sign, and hopefully I'll get to the "Hey do you want a job" stage at one of the two jobs.
I'm heading to Seattle with Lydia for her birthday for the next few days. I'm not taking my laptop, so blogging if it's done at all will be via my iPhone. Take care of yourselves you crazy kids.
