So my life revolves around three things right now. 1. working as a cook at Cinco Ranch. They got new shirts, so I don't have to keep borrowing Charles, which was annoying for him, since he uses them at his other job as well, working as a chef at a bar/restaurant, because they're new and don't have uniforms. Also, I'm working more often, because either they like me a lot (I impressed Ed, the head chef, which Charles says takes a lot) or they're trying to phase out Matt, who used to work there but only came back, like me, to cover hours since another chef quit. Matt, apparently, is arrogant and prefers to do things his way. Charles and Ed are the same way, to a degree (I've learned two ways to do almost everything, both of which are good and acceptable), but they don't conflict with each other, whereas Matt does. Charles warned me not to listen to him too much if we end up being scheduled together. Last week, he had three days and I had one. This week, I had three days and he only had one. [shrugs] good for me, anyway. 2. job-hunting. Despite my enjoyment of the food service industry, and working with great people like Charles and Ed, I am still looking for a job in the publishing field broadly and the editing department specifically (though I would settle for a non-editing job in the publishing field or an editing job in other companies). That goes slowly. I thought it would be as simple as collecting a bunch of jobs to apply for and sending them all out in the same day. However, I discovered that researching the companies to find out who to address the cover letter to, and writing a good cover letter specifically aimed at each company, is a pain in the butt. And so, my life has a third center of revolution: 3. organizing stuff. That includes old papers and poetry I've written, notes from classes I'm keeping, artwork (real and on my computer), coins that I and my grandmother collect, and at some point I need to get back on my EBay account to take charge of selling all the comic cards, sports cards and magic: the gathering cards that have been accumulating in our house for quite some time. Raph is finishing up the card list for them, which he has been working on for over two weeks, but since he goes back to school soon (yikes! summer is almost over!), I'm gonna have to be in charge of the whole selling and mailing things out, plus organizing them into sets to sell, since we have far far too many (and would never get rid of them) if I sold them individually. comic cards will probably go in complete, nearly complete, or far from complete sets. I mean, why not? Magic cards will probably go out as decks, so I can get rid of lands and commons as well as the rares and uncommons that people ACTUALLY want to buy. It will basically be giving away crappy cards (or cards we have 30 of) to people who buy the good ones. Unfortunately, almost all of our cards have been played with, so we're selling to players not collectors, and won't be able to get full price for anything. [laughs] as if you can get full price for anything on EBay. [shrugs] Coins have been organized, but researching foreign coins is a pain in the butt because all I have is the picture and whatever foreign language text the coin has. At least most of the coins I have are from countries that use the same alphabet as us. A couple are in arabic and russian, and others are in asian languages that I have no idea how to identify. I mean, I suppose I could look up the faces of leaders from the last 100 years so I'll have a general idea of what decade it was made in. [laughs] And, I have the project that has been put on hold for a long long time: copying all of my poetry (the stuff on loose paper and the stuff on my computer) into a single spiral notebook in a special binder. I really do have a lot. A lot of crap and some stuff worth actually editing, but I just want it all in one place, that's not electronic, so I don't lose it if my hard drive goes bye bye for some unforseen reason. People are like "I put stuff on backup disks, so it's safe". No, the only real safe is paper. Paper you have to burn or dissolve in water to lose. My computer could die tomorrow because a screw works its way loose from the mother board and touches the case, and a spark of electricity fries everything. Yes, yes it's that easy. It doesn't happen very often, but if you think of it another way: computers have a life of, what, max 10 years? I mean, if you have a frequently used computer from 10 years ago, besides "what kind of freak are you?", but also "damn, that's an old computer". I generally don't trust them beyond 4 years. At least, hard drives that get as much use as mine. It's like pushing a car's mileage past 100,000 miles. Yah, that much. But paper, hell, they still have books that were printed 100-200 years ago. The newer crap, stuff printed 40-50 years ago, is already coming apart, but that's not the paper's fault but the cheap binding and the wear from handling. My binder gets very little handling and can last at least a good deal longer than my computer. So yes, I have lots to do. Plus I have to put on shoes and go to church now, because I work tomorrow morning. I'm so used to school, where mass was saturday afternoon, that I don't even think about the fact that the family is used to going to sunday morning mass. [grins and shrugs]. Anyway, gotta go...stuff can wait. It has learned to be patient. Oh yah, remind me to pay my bills. And tell the Kenyon post office I moved. I swear, they forward my credit card statements 2 weeks after they recieve it, and they don't forward anything else. I thought they automatically forwarded stuff over the summers. I mean, I'm friends with half the workers there and had a long chat about graduating. [sighs] Anyway, church first. au revoir, blogger, until again.