The thing about grandmas

This is a cheap shot for a blog entry, but it was too good to pass up.

My grandmother sent me an e-mail responding to my last post (yes, my grandmother is hip, tech saavy and Too Cool For School.) Anyway, she's currently boarding our two dogs at her house while my parents are on vacation. The dogs, Toto and Josie, yes, they're from Kansas, and yes, Toto looks like Toto, seem to be giving Grandma a bit of a hard time. For those of you who have seen or read "Marley and Me," you're on the right track.

Her e-mail included three post scripts. It's best if you read these with a Private Eye/Guy Noir inflection in your voice, particularly for the rubber band line.

"P.S.2 Josie got sick night before last, whimpered a lot, and at 4 a.m. I heard her throwing up. So at zero degrees, all dogs went outside whilst I put all Josie's kennel bedding in the wash and rustled up some more for her. Signs are that she ate a rubber band. Then this morning she had diahrrea in the front hall. I'm sure it wasn't Toto, because Josie disappeared quickly when I discovered it. I really do love having three dogs around!

P.S.3 It's Kansas Day!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen is my genetic lineage.

The thing about jobs

I'm not one to dwell on tough times, but I can't ignore them either.

Yesterday, after nearly five months searching for full-time employment, I went to a temp agency to drop off my resume. Three girls were working inside the little office, all about my age. Humility is certainly in order when your minimum wage employment depends on the whims of 20-something women who spend the afternoons chatting American Idol and berating tardy workers twice their age over the phone.

I spent at least 30 minutes filling out a plethora of paperwork, of which only one page of was looked at during my interview. In the paperwork, I was asked about frequency of personal drug use (separate questions --with all the slang equivalencies-- for cocaine, marijuana, prescription drugs and don't forget, crystal meth) the likelihood of me roughing up co-workers, the possibility of me committing workers compensation fraud, the chance of me skipping work on a routine basis etc. etc. etc.

When I finished the first eight pages of questionnaires and surveys, I turned them in, only to receive the next battery of exams, this time a poorly disguised ethics quiz. Only somewhat ironically, the ethics test was given via palm pilot glued securely to a giant piece of acrylic plastic so as to discourage stuffing the thing in one's purse. Better proof would be: if you don't return the Palm, you fail the test.

The ethics portion drilled me over drug use, desire to steal and posession of slovenly traits. Again, I never saw the Palm pilot results analyzed, similar to all the other useless data they were attempting to collect on me. If anyone is actually dumb enough to admit to their drug addictions or voilatile tempers on job applications, this agency wouldn't know anyway because they barely take a gander at the paperwork...

The interview for Assistant to the Administrative Assistant (aka warehouse clerk) was brief, if uneventful. After concluding that my experience in other fields, university degree and bilingualism could, hopefully, substitute for the year of clerical work desired by the employer for a position entailing light manual labor, I was ushered into another room for 30 more minutes of--you guessed it-- MORE PAPERWORK.

If anything, the experience was a sad one. That securing employment requires the destruction of no less than 10 trees. That a hiring company would need to inquire about potential employees' drug use, violent character flaws and poor work ethic, and worse yet, expect someone to be stupid enough to answer affirmatively. That the sign-in sheet in the office was full of names and under the column marked "type of work desired" almost everyone had scribbled in all caps, "ANY." That the woman in front of me in line was orally padding her resume, shouting through the window with some desperation, "I once packed boxes for Wilson Farms!"

I am an intelligent, college-educated person. I can't get a job as a receptionist because I'm "over-qualified." Not even the grocery store has called me in for an interview. My mother got laid off last week from her nursing job of 20-some years. 100,000 Americans lost their jobs in just this week alone.

These are hard times and the desperation is palpable.

Tomorrow I have a formal interview to be the Assistant to the Assistant aka Warehouse Clerk. I have mixed feelings about it, but driving 30 miles to pack boxes and count inventory for $12/hour might be about as good as it gets.

The thing about icicles

The Icicle of Death isn't going anywhere.

Thanks to the non-stop snowfall our roof has started accumulating vast amounts of ice. I've always found icicles quite pretty, but those of Buffalo take on a gargantuan quality that is at once impressive and intimidating. The largest of the icicles hangs over the driveway and our entrance to the house.

For the last 48 hours we've had a bit of a reprieve from the snow, even a heat wave on Thursday when we made it all the way up to 32°F/0°C!! I took the opportunity to wash my car which has taken a beating from all the salt on the roads, but the "warmth" didn't touch the giant ice stalactite. Today it's back to 11°F, and thus the Icicle of Death isn't going anywhere.

Fearing for my car, and more importantly, my life, I decided I needed to cut the icicle down to size a bit. I vertically chucked tennis balls at it for a while, hoping to knock it loose, with very limited success. Finally, I turned to a running shoe for better leverage, but still no luck. If it wasn't for the nearby windows, I would have resorted to something heavier, like a part of the Icicle of Death's smaller predecessor, the Icicle of Near Death, which fell last week from the same location:

Anyway, if anyone has any icicle removal suggestions, please let me know. I'm fairly certain one of these days I'm going to drive under it and it will come plummeting down, crushing my car and maiming anyone in my passenger seat. Seriously, this thing is huge! Since this picture was taken it's grown---now at least a foot in circumference!
Anyway, the snow is pretty at least. :)

the thing about the girl next to me

I'm at the library and there is a girl sitting in the computer cubicle next to me. She's been there for a while, not that I'm paying much attention. For about a half hour she looked like she was doing normal computeresque things, browsing the internet etc., but about 10 minutes ago things changed. All of the sudden she just folded her arms and put her head down on the table in front of her a la Nap Style.

I don't particularly frown on sleeping in the library. You've got to do what you've got to do--but if you're occupying a computer station while you snooze, that's just kinda inconsiderate. Splaying yourself over the keyboard and letting the monitor idle is just not cool when there are people waiting.

I desperately wish I had a Kleenex for her. The poor thing is suffering from a nasty cold. About every 2 minutes (you can almost time it) she sniffles, huffing her runny-nose snot back into her face. There it was again.

*sniffle*

I might understand if it was really late or really early in the morning...but it's 3:30 in the afternoon.

Dear Girl Sitting Next to Me,
Take that exhaustion home, give it some NyQuil and put it to bed. Seriously though, one of those couches looks way comfier than that cubicle desk.
Love,
The Lake Effect Affect

The thing about gingerbread houses

Making gingerbread houses is pretty great. For some reason I find it highly therapeutic. I wouldn't go so far as to say I possess much talent in this surprisingly challenging medium, but I still had a good time making and decorating them with my family.

This was the first house we made...
Snow covered chex-mix roof, sprinkles christmas lights, gum drop and chewy lifesavers windows, inward swinging French front doors, crystallized sugar icicles.

House #2: This is our LEED Certified Gingerbread House in which 99% of the decorating accoutrements were organic. If anyone needs lentils or orange split peas for soup, please let us know.
Piping bags are certainly fun, but more difficult to maneuver than they look like on the Food Channel.

This was what I would refer to as our "before" picture. As in, before this structurally unsound house hilariously imploded much to our dismay. We rebuilt, as any self-respecting American would after a natural disaster.

Seriously though, organic pinto beans? split peas? do I hear any takers???

The thing about the Wintry Mix

I should amend my previous post. We've got a mad snow storm going on outside and my Gmail doesn't know it yet. It still has grey clouds hanging around. There's still hope.

Did you know it frequently snows sideways in Buffalo? On those days my house shakes fairly violently due to the wind.

Humorously, when I studied abroad in Seville, Spain I used to laugh at the local weather reports. Nearly every week would be like this, give or take 10 degrees:

Monday: Sunny, high of 85°F
Tuesday: Sunny, high of 79°F
Wednesday: Sunny, high of 80°F
Thursday: Sunny, high of 82°F
Friday: Sunny, high of 75°F
Saturday: Sunny, high of 78°F
Sunday: Sunny. One cloud might cross the sky around 3:07 p.m.

I exaggerate very little. Living in the Midwest most of my life, we have four, full seasons with plenty of everything: Sun, snow, rain, heat, wind, cold, ice, hail, tornadoes. etc. I found Seville's weather to be refreshing on the whole, but uncomfortable during the sweltering summer...

Here in Buffalo, the weather report is equally humorous in its repetitiveness. The little graphics on the weather forecast are not sunshine looking egg-yolks. Instead, they've been replaced by an all-encompassing graphic I like to refer to as "Wintry Mix." Wintry Mix (at least on the local tv stations) is often hard to distinguish from "Just Plain Snow." Meterologists use this ambiguity in their favor when predicting weather. Just like in Seville where it was sunny and hot, here in Buffalo they are confident in two things: It will snow. It will be cold. Any deviation from this standard is just a lucky break. And since the snow accumulation varies greatly depending on one's proximity to the Great lakes, the "Wintry Mix" icon always covers the bases.

So yes, it does snow here every day, even if it's just a few flakes. And yes, the forecast got it right, even if it's only sleeting, thundersnowing and raining at once. These are all variable components which can fall under the "Wintry Mix" icon. No need to check the weather or hire someone new for graphics, the "Wintry Mix" will be here until Aprilish.

The thing about e-mail

You know you've been on the computer too long when your e-mail inbox knows it's snowing before you do.

Google, which as of late seems to own or have a hand in nearly every trendy internet tool, has been my reliable e-mail host since Gmail's invitation-only days. Recently they rolled out a series of fun themes for customizing one's Gmail inbox in their intriguing Labs sections. Themes is now its own page within settings but the Labs area is still a never ending shelf of new toys* for the sandbox.

I chose "Tree" as my theme, with little knowledge as to its purpose until the other day when there was an accumulation of snow all over my inbox. With its normal sunshiny affect, I was confused why snow was taking over. Until I looked outside.

It was snowing.

Typical. I mean, it's Buffalo. But still. My inbox noticed before I did.

Another day there were water droplets (and fairly cutesy realistic, I might add) all over my mailbox.

Indeed, it was raining.

Kind of cool, kind of creepy. Who needs windows when we have technology? (no pun intended)


* --A recent gander in labs listed e-mail gadgets such as "Mail Goggles," which allows users to set preferences forcing them to answer a handful of basic math questions in order to enter their mail after a drunken excursion (in not so many words). I haven't enabled this tool myself, but I certainly can imagine its applicability.

The thing about 2009

Happy New Year
Felíz Año

Go see Slumdog Millionaire (then buy soundtrack) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And rent Persepolis.

Don't make a new year's resolution unless you're going to stick to it--that way you won't feel bad about falling short of your own expectations.

That's all I've got.

Lots of love to you and yours.