1. Going to DC this weekend. YAHOO! Going to show Stynx and mullacc around my old stomping grounds.
2. I had two great interviews last week, and I haven't heard anything yet :( That's no good.
3. Must go to the gym today. Really don't want. Feeling laaaaazy.

1. I rode my bike to work today and am very proud of myself.

2. Going to the farmers' market after work. Yay, beer!

3. Broke, broke, broke. Trying to figure out how to make it to payday.

1. Pipe burst in the new place last night. The same goddamn pipe that the seller said was replaced with copper a week ago. I wasn't aware that copper came in white pieces of plastic with SUPERGLUED ON connecters. Asshole.

2. I've been feeling exceptionally crankypants all day because this week has just sucked so hard. But my homie is coming down this weekend, we're celebrating another friend's birthday, and there's the Mefi meetup so I'm hoping to see if maybe some people time will help. Or at least the booze will, at any rate.

3. I really hope I can move my computer over to the new house soon. I'm pretty tired of listening to iRock and I'm not sure where I want to put my tiny ass television yet so I don't want to set it up until I know. Argh.

1. Hungry
2. Sleepy
3. Eye continues to improve (no pain today, yay!)

mudpuppie, your farmers' market has beer?? Jealous! I love mid-week markets, too.

1. It's cool and cloudy here again, after a few days of actually hot! weather, so I'm taking advantage of that to make cassoulet for dinner -- white beans; short ribs from our quarter cow; sausage we made from scratch; carrot, squash (not traditional), parsnip, canned tomatoes & dried tomatoes, chard, thyme, rosemary, leeks all from the garden. Yum!

2. Broke, broke, broke here too. Likely taking a pay cut at work (everyone, not just me). Sucky.

3. I have baby ducklings in my guest room, which grows tiresome, but they are omg SO CUTE.

What?!! YOU HAVE BABY DUCKLINGS IN YOUR GUEST ROOM?! AND THIS IS THE FIRST WE KNOW ABOUT IT??!!

1. Sewage smell was back at work so I left early to work at home (and take care of some errands like getting a certified check for my new apt)

2. On the way home I stopped in Anthropologie and got a new cotton comforter (for spring/summer) for 1/3 of the original price! It is white with gray leaves on it and it matches some padded stools I have.

3. About to eat Banh mi leftovers from last night

1. Condo board meeting tonight.
2. Guy gets home tomorrow.
3. Bought Dead Space, to go with the posh new teevee. Which was a hilarious adventure at the GameStop in the neighborhood.

1. I applied for a credit card and got rejected, because I had a few lates last year and before that used a credit counseling service to pay down a debt (now completely paid, never missed a payment, there was never bankruptcy). Wow. It used to be that you could get a credit card if you were a warm body. Grump.

2. Watched "Grey Gardens" on HBO last night. Absolutely fascinating.

3. The major-league baseball record of consecutive sellouts at Fenway Park (477+ since May 15, 2003) is in jeopardy; the Red Sox say that "not all games have been sold out this year." So buy your tickets now. Hey, this means that if want to buy tickets I may actually get to pay something remotely near face value. Excellent.

AND THIS IS THE FIRST WE KNOW ABOUT IT??!!

Blame stet!! He is the one who spends more time here. Though I guess I'm the one with the camera. So blame us both if you want.

And there are chicks in the laundry room.

1. We're growing tobacco in our front yard in a neighborhood that's pretty front lawn proud. This makes me both nervous and subversive feeling. Mostly nervous because I don't want to have to talk to every single person who walks by about what's growing in our yard when they interrupt my very important reading and napping on my porch time.

2. I wish every single blog I read wasn't telling me what to buy for Earth Day. I'm pretty sure lack of owning stuff isn't the problem.

3. I've also cut out the sweets and carbs in the past few weeks. Feeling better, hope I can maintain it. Makes me realize how weirdly sort of addicty I am about carbs, which feels hyperbolic to say but, I don't know, it's the only word I have for how it feels in my brain.

1. Preparing a job application
2. Looking at the grey day outside
3. Leaving work in 10 minutes to pick up the kidling

1. Had a good day, though full of odd (and unrelated) ups and downs.

2. Came home to find Amazon box with new music on the front porch. Yay new music! (Specifically Plushgun, Art Brut, Dan Deacon today)

3. AT&T has taken to SENDING PEOPLE TO OUR HOUSE trying to get us to switch back after we ditched them last year (for everything, including phone). The third salesperson since Xmas rang my doorbell not ten minutes after I got in just now. I told this one, "At this point we're just staying with [cable company] to piss you off because you're annoying the hell out of us."

1) looking forward to something like normal temperatures tonight, slept like crap last night (95 in April yuck)
2) Turning in my final project for Photo Storytelling class tonight (the first 6 are what I'm actually turning in).
3) Very slow at work right now, but I'm sure that's not going to last.

1. This is the first cycle I've had without birth control in fifteen years. I feel like an entire troop of irish dancers has taken up residence on my ovaries. ow.

2. been getting my boyfriend into doctor who. we're about halfway through season one (well, the new series). I want him to SUFFER LIKE I SUFFER WHEN HE REGENERATES. I will cry. I did last time, and I've had longer to get attached to this one.

3. I went to an interview yesterday. or tried. Got there, they said "oh, it was for noon." but the temp agency told me 1. they said they would "try to reschedule," but acted like it was my fault.
Just as well, I don't want to be a temp anyways.

1. Carrying a plastic container full of winter clothes into my storage shed, and I slammed my hand/knuckles into the door frame. Yeow!!! Now I have a very large red/purple bruise on my first and second knuckles.

2. Taking a pan of meatloaf out of the oven, put it on the stove, and accidentally touched said HOT pan with my right hand (#1 was my left hand). Now have a burn on the side of my palm, under my thumb.

3. Am planning on wrapping myself in bubble wrap and hiding in my bed.

I told y'all about the ducks here. And by "told y'all", I mean "complained about." We also had, until recently, a sick chicken in the living room.

I quote "We've got four new wyandottes that just moved out to the coop and three americaunas and four khaki campbell ducks brooding in the house as well as a half-dozen turkey poults on the way. Our drake continues to molest the chickens so he's either going to find a new place to live or he's going to become a combination of prosciutto and confit."

You may also be interested to know that, until this morning, I was trying to persuade a broody chicken to hatch a clutch of duck eggs. I WOULD HAVE HAD DUCKLINGS FOLLOWING A CHICKEN! Didn't work, though.

At any rate, three point update:

1) I got the professional discount on a yard of potting soil instead of the retail price.

2) I found a school of chainsaw carving in Allyn, WA.

3) Wednesday is my wife's work-from-home day, so she gets to make dinner. She is making us cassoulet!

And a fourth, meta update, I think I've finished the modifications needed to attach a trailer to the three-point hitch on my walking tractor. See what I did there?

1. It WAS my day off. We were megabusy yesterday so they asked me to come in to help my coworker today.
So of course we were slooooowwww...they finally let me leave at 1.

2. Sushi for lunch helped give me a better attitude about item 1.

3. Went to gym late this afternoon to do my strength training. Starting to see results-a friend of mine stopped me and mentioned she could definitely see a difference-and even her husband had noticed and said something to her. So, there is more to life than spin class!

1. I applied for a job I want. Badly. It's an editorial internship with a very prestigious international publishing company. I called them and had a nice chat with them last week or so. Got a missed call from them on Tuesday, and returned it yesterday. Thought I'd maybe gotten an interview for the internship. It wasn't that. There is another position going at the company - and they think I have all the right experience and qualifications for it. They've asked me to interview for it. That's tomorrow. I'm still in the running for the other job too. I would love either position, it's a great 'in' to the industry, a very reputable company, and, you know, a paying wage. Eek. Am nervous, but have a good feeling about it. I can tell they really like me, so think that's good. Trying not to get my hopes up too much though.

2. Been to the comedy festival a couple of times this week. It's been fun, saw a couple of Aussie comedians, they were good, worth the trip. I randomly made friends with a girl on the walk down Swanston St towards the town hall - she'd gotten her shoe trapped in the crack between the big stone squares. I offered commiseration, and we got chatting. Told her about the interview, she told me about her brothers interview, turned out we were on our way to the same show, and knew people in common. I love making random friends.

3. I got a twenty out of the ATM to give to my friend for my ticket last night, and was stopped by a beggar asking for a couple of dollars. I declined - said I had no coins. She then asked for a fiver - I said no - THEN SHE ASKED FOR A TWENTY. Gotta admire her presumption. If I won't do something small, ask for something outrageous.

I still said no. What a miser. Though in my defence I'm an unemployed bum.

1. I never thought I would have three kid activities going on at once. I thought that parents that scheduled more than one or two were off their rockers. My kids are currently in Scouts, piano, and baseball. It's nice to have a full but manageable schedule. There's little time to sit around and feel sorry for yourself. Besides, I stay home on Scout night because that is mainly a Dad activity. I was never going to sign them up for baseball again but they asked to play. If they show an interest it's hard to say no. It's going quite well.

2. One of my coworkers who is on vacation, and the lifeblood of cardiac rehab, will be away until the beginning of May. I'm working most of her hours. Again, it's nice to be busy but kind of hairy as well. I'm used to working one day a week, volunteering for two, and sitting around reading Metachat and contemplating my navel for the rest.

3. This morning I went to a breakfast the school was hosting for volunteers. It was really nice. They served one of my favorite drinks -- Dunkin Donuts coffee. Yeah!

1. Raced through my morning to an 11:00 appointment for what was easily the most rigorous job interview of my life. This was with an intimidatingly sophisticated consulting firm with a very strong and specific company culture - interview was 2 hours 15 minutes and included a preinterview, a video conference, and then a panel interview with a silent person, a good/folksy cop and a bad/challenging cop format. When I walked out I felt like a wrung-out piece of laundry, the whole thing a blur.

2. Conversed with my boss this afternoon about funding possibilities for job extension. They don't look good. So: more effort on finding outside employment than internal funding.

3. Attended a really nice Earth Day event to represent Slow Food tonight. Lots of nice people there, some I knew, some I didn't. There was a greens tasting, pickle tasting, and cheese tasting. The whole thing took place at a charming, hokey/expensive, old-school-upscale New England restaurant tucked away in the woods on an old farm. Rock gardens, manmade waterfalls, moss, gazebos, a late-40s-ish decor, kinda place. The whole thing was done by candlelight as the theme was "unplugging." As a thank-you for helping her put the event together, the event coordinator gave each of us representing organizations a gift certificate for "dinner for two." Woot!

1. Turns out the drug dealers across the street are renting from a guy who's a city employee. As we have a close relationship with both the police and the city councilor who was just elected president, putting a little pressure in the right direction should help before this gets out of hand like last year (same address, different owner).

2. My nephew and I spent several hours building three tiers of scaffold (without all the parts, thanks to the carelessness of others) so we could reach a tree limb that's "crossing" back from the northernmost part of the tree to the southernmost end. Got most of it down, had to hand-saw several cuts because we still couldn't reach them with the reciprocating saw. Then we had to dismantle all the scaffold again. No injuries. :)
You wouldn't believe how many people walk past orange cones on the sidewalk like they're not there for a reason. Duh.

3. Dad's dementia is to the point -- well, several points. He couldn't understand what we were doing with the tree, and when we explained it was to allow more light to reach the lawn, he kept saying "laundry". There was a murder in our neighborhood this morning -- domestic violence -- and he had to have the timing explained to him multiple times because he didn't understand how he could read about it in the newspaper the same day (they held the presses -- but it's actually the last week it's an afternoon paper). When he went to the box to buy one, he didn't understand that when you see the box is empty, you don't put money in. But when an old colleague appeared this evening, he was full of his "small world" stories, memories of years ago, although names were often shaky. That's the way this dementia works.

Humpday's over, but oh well...

1. Saw a great local production of The Importance of Being Earnest last night, then had delicious strawberry mojitos at a shisha bar nearby. Yes, there are shisha bars that serve mojitos!

2. Strawberry mojitos are very, very special, if killer - add strawberry puree and liquer to your regular mojito. Yummers.

3. I just booked Glyndebourne tickets, for Purcell's 'The Fairy Queen'. I'm going to have to buy a new evening frock for it as well. I feel very sophisticated and very, very broke - luckily my credit card billing month ends tomorrow as I really want to see Tamasha's Bollywood Wuthering Heights and I don't want to feel too guilty about spending so much on shows in one month!

Oops, lost a link: Glyndebourne.

And big hugs to stilicho, and for our unemployed Mechazens - good vibes coming your way for successful job hunting...