Mixed feelings

So yesterday I showed my pro editor mom my rewrite, and she pointed out the inconsistent hyphenation and the fact that since it's a sales letter, I should have moved an "act now!" sentence from the end to the beginning. Then she told me not to quit my day job because she thinks I probably have stiff competition. It made me feel fairly depressed. I know this wasn't her intention; like me and like everyone else who writes, we just don't bother to pull any punches.

It was kind of an emotional rollercoaster (roller coaster? roller-coaster? Arghle-barghle!) day anyway. I've been working a long-term temp assignment in a software liberry, filling in for someone who left on short-term disability due to, as far as anyone can tell, nervous exhaustion. (Or perhaps the vapors.) The person's disability is up Dec. 1, so I kind of assumed I'd be moving on to something else next week.

However, yesterday I got the news that the person has officially resigned. The company is going to advertise the job and they invited me to apply. I got taken out to coffee so they could tell me this news, which is a pretty good sign; the treating of potential hires to free food or drink tends to be a wooing rather than a discouraging tactic. At the least, I'll be temping here until they find someone else. So, I should be pretty happy. After all, the economy is tanking blah blah blah current event-cakes.

I kind of am happy. I'll definitely apply and take the job if I can get it, and put lots of effort into doing it well. So, yay. Sort of. Sort of because part of me feels like it shouldn't be this easy, and conversely, going after and getting a job of my choice, which I've so far been completely un-sucessful doing, shouldn't be this hard.

I probably am just sinking into my yearly winter malaise. It doesn't help that my throat has swollen up - apparently my lymph nodes are busily manufacturing white blood cells to combat yet another cold/virus threat. I don't want another cold, dammit. And I want to be a part-time rewriter. So there.

I cans be rewriter?

I AM SO EXCITED! Eeeee!

Ok, so last week I responded to a CL ad for a part-time copy-editor/rewriter job. A commercial real-estate investment firm in Dupont Circle is looking for someone who can rewrite their promo materials in grammatically correct, good written English. I seriously practically pee'd my pants when I read the ad, because I LOVE REWRITING. Friends who've given me term papers and grad school applications and asked for suggestions usually end up running far, far away as I end up red-inking and then rewriting the whole thing. (Sorry, friends. I know it's annoying.)

As in any other profession, actual for-real copy editors and copywriters need some kind of cred: you've either got to have samples (I have zero) or be familiar with A.P. and Chicago style guides (huh?) and growing up in a family of professional wordy types, I know I can't hold a candle to the real pros. (The test that my mom's editing firm gives? I would fail eet.)

So imagine my joy when I saw this ad, and saw that the job is part-time, and saw no mention of style guides or portfolios, and saw that the ad contained NUMEROUS GRAMMATICAL AND STYLISTIC ERRORS! I promptly responded and said I'd gotten a 5 on my Advanced Placement English exam (true) and also rewrote their ad and sent it back to them. Ha ha.

Then, to my grief, I went to check the ad, and it was gone from CL. Of course it was. They were probably flooded with five gazillion responses from the beelions of unemployed writers in the area. Who knows, I thought, they probably filled the position in five minutes. I was one sad wannabe.

But then today I got an email from their HR guy! He sent me a sales letter with instructions to rewrite it as I saw fit and send it back. They'll be picking the top three and interviewing after Thanksgiving. So I just spent a couple of hours researching Tax Lien investments and Mortgage Note CD's. At first I was like, this is all finance crap, I can't rewrite this. But then I started to understand the products (guess what, there is a way to make money off the foreclosure crisis) and rewrote what I think is a hell of a sales letter. I hope they think so too. I looked at their website, and there's a ton of rewriting to be done... Fingers crossed!

Jazzercise - 1, Me - 0

Yesterday I took a Jazzercise class for the second time in as many weeks. I decided to start going because I need to get more exercise in, and Jazzercise was a good cheap option that meant I wouldn't have to cross rte 50 coming back from my temp job at Skyline.

I used to take it with Mrs. Pinchloaf, and it's cheap, cheesy and fun. You do simplified jazz routines to All Your Favorite Pop and Country and R&B hits with a group of (mostly) middle-aged ladies. The theory is that you work your way up the exertion curve and then back down and then do some light weights. You can be as high-impact as you want or as low-impact.

So last night I really got into it - I was more high impact than low and jazzmatazzed my velour sweatpantsed ass off. As a result, about 45 minutes in I got a monstrous headache. This is what happens to me when I work hard. I have to watch it because sometimes the monstrous headache leads to throwing up. So I went home, and ma soer had come over with sour weed so my dad could make his famous schavel, which is a very delicious sour weed soup. Sadly, I couldn't eat any of it. I had to soak in a hot tub and then lie very very still for the rest of the evening.

There's a very unfair set of contradictions involved in getting healthy. By getting healthy I mean eating lots of fruits and vegetables, exercising and getting down to my federally mandated healthy weight. (149 and not an ounce less I tell you.) All this stuff is supposed to add years to your life and make you feel good most of the time. However, it has to be approached carefully. I'm 30 pounds overweight and work a sitting-down desk job, so if I start working out an hour per day, I will probably injure myself. Apparently even if I work too hard in one jazzercise class, I'm out for the rest of the night.

It's the same with food: if I immediately change to eating lots of fruits and veggies, I'm going to have some serious intestinal distress. Furthermore, even though I know the overweight is complicating my ability to exercise, I can't lose it too fast or I'll eff up my metabolism or be malnourished and get sick. I know, I know, slow and steady wins the race, blah blah blah gradual lifestylechangecakes. I thought I WAS being gradual, but apparently not gradual enough.

The other night I caught a few minutes of Half Ton Mama, one of the shows on a 'check out how fat these people are!' night on some cable channel (TLC maybe?) There are a number of shows about people who have gotten so large that they can never leave their beds unless fifteen firemen come in and drag them out on a tarp. On every show, they have pictures of the people from ten or twenty years before, and they're all normal-sized. Chubby, maybe, but not scary fat. Then of course by the time they're huge, they can't just eat less or exercise more and have to have scary surgeries where they have an 80% chance of dying on the operating table because they're so big.

Thinking about these folks makes me uncomfortable because I could so easily see it happening to me. I'm pretty sure it won't happen to me, but still. It's so easy to eat a lot and sit around. And now I'm all hungry. And sore.

Apparently, we do not care about whales

According to the Environment News Service:

"WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 2008 (ENS) - The U.S. Supreme Court today lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar off the coast of California, handing a defeat to environmentalists who say the limits are needed to protect whales and dolphins. The court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that a lower court judge had wrongly allowed the environmental impacts of the training exercises to trump U.S. national security interests."

I heard this on NPR yesterday. It's sad. Apparently sonar testing scrambles whale and dolphin brains, and they get all confused and end up beached. I'm also in favor of military security, and the argument went that an untrained Navy is worse than a bunch of dead sea mammals. I was talking about it with my dad, and he said that earlier arguments centered around the location of the tests - the Navy doesn't HAVE to conduct tests in warm waters, where whales and dolphins are likely to be breeding and hanging out, but for convenience and fun's sake they (the Navy) prefer it.

I'm reacting to this story more strongly than to other enviro ills because it's us, our system, that decided that we'd prefer to scramble whale brains over the alternative. It's not like the oil spill, where there was a big mean corporation and I could go, 'well, I'm not part of that big mean corporation' or the melting permafrost which is leading to grumpy bears who aren't cued to go into hibernation and therefore run around terrorizing locals (because even though that's horrible, it's kind of funny. Bears!) It's California, and it's the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a check on the big bad military industrial complex. Plus, there's just something severely icky about the image. There you are, a whale, or a dolphin, swimming around, eating some krill, looking for a little whale tail, and all of a sudden you get super confused and you don't know up or down and you end up floundering onto a beach and unable to swim. Lame.

In other hilarious enviro news, a few months back I read that bear attacks are up in Anchorage because they built a bicycle trail right next to a river. The river is where the fish are, so... THAT'S WHERE THE BEARS GO. And then they eat bicyclists instead.

OMG WEDDING!

Say hello to my new obsession

I don't have a picture to upload here, but I will say that the object of my affection has been extensively blogged about already, so there are many pictures out there. Of...

Potachos!

I hung out with the ChriShawn and Lil' Italian Redhead: The Sister Version on Saturday night. We played some rousing pop culture trivial pursuit, and then watched some of P2: The Movie About That Chick Trapped In A Parking Garage With a Psycho Garage Attendant (most yelled comment: "Bitch, tase him! Tase him now!")Then after the attendant was duly blown up, (with a taser,) we decided we were hungry and so we went to Denny's. It was a tossup between Denny's and IHOP, and I'm so glad Shawn insisted on Denny's, because they have the most amazing, most disgustingly satisfying, egregiously unnecessary appetizer ever invented. It's called Potachos, and it's kettle chips covered in queso dip with sausage, bacon, shredded cheddar cheese, green peppers and sour cream. We ordered with without the green peppers, because, seriously. What is the point of the one vegetable? No point. None.

And damn yo. The shit is so good. I announced that they're good enough to start dating someone and then break up with them just so you can call your friends and go, "We just broke up, I need to eat potachos." Shawn insisted that they're so good you don't need a reason. Potachas by themselves are reason enough.

It's part of Denny's 'Rock Star Menu'. Apparently they adopt rock bands now and invite them to invent menu items. I dunno who invented Potachos but I would like to thank them, and encourage them to give up music and embrace catering to gluttons as a career.

Unfortunately, the rock star menu is only available from 10pm-5am... and yeah, I rarely end up at a Denny's before 10pm... but still. I wish they were a lunch item as well. Because I would eat them for lunch.

New Reason to Live...

Felicia Day. Web sitcom. World of Warcraft. Nuff said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grCTXGW3sxQ

Voteration

I woke up bright and early this morning, chug-a-lugged some coffee, and made my bleary way to my alma mater, Graham Road Elementary, to get my vote on. I got there at 6:03 and there was a line of pre-work voters, but it wasn't too bad. I stood in line with mostly couples. Apparently voting is a couples sport, so I felt out of place with my singletude. But then I got to go in before everyone cuz there were more A through L's than M through Z's. Ha ha, suckers.

It has gotten less weird to be in my old elementary school, but it still feels odd. We vote in the cafeteria and I still remember gathering for assemblies to sing Great American Hero and that rainbow song by Kermit. To make it even stranger one of the secretaries from the school, tho' now retired, is an election officer, and she still remembers me! It is the freakiest thing ever. Nice, but freaky.

For some reason I don't expect anyone to remember me. This is partly because I myself have such a bad memory for faces and people. I can barely remember kids I went to college with, and that really wasn't that long ago. It's also that I tend not to look back too much; I am as I am today and therefore whatever I was before is irrelevant.

It's a strange feeling to see people From One's Past. This weekend I went to CircusJeff's wedding. The attendees included kids Jeff went to high school with (they aren't kids anymore but they're always kids in my mind,) some of whom I've hung out with in recent years, but some of whom I haven't seen since they visited Jeff in college. One was his good friend Dave, who I recognized, but I didn't expect him to come up and start talking to me and know stuff about my current life, which he totally did. This happened a lot at Jeff's wedding, because Jeff is the nicest person ever and his friends are also the nicest people ever. Nice people with good memories.

Also attending were two of my room-mates from college, Sarah and Julie. I call them room-mates because we lived together and because I can't think of a descriptor that sums up what they were. They were huge in my life at the time. We acted out great psychodramas and were each other's audience. And then we left and fell out of touch, and then there they were, back again, exactly the same, and our group dynamic was exactly the same, and it was like if we wanted to we could just go back to the same pre-war apartment in the Fan and buy groceries and own cats and argue about feminist politics and everything would be exactly the same. And then we left the wedding, and I don't know if we'll stay in touch now.

The wedding was great - great ceremony, great food, good music, good people. The bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome and as a couple they were ecstatic and it was a good time all around. Atomicate was kind enough to accompany me, and I hope she will forgive me for missing her gig on Sunday night, cuz it was another epic fail in my attempts to go see her amazing band Aubriot. I kept forgetting to introduce her to people at the wedding because in my mind, all my friends know each other and we all have the same shared history, so she knows about the time that Sarah and I were bloodthirsty wiccans in a production of The Bacchae, and Sarah knows about the time that Atomicate and I played Mark's house party, and we'll all head down to Hell's Kitchen in Newark for some bright pink cocktails after the home bout with the Pinchloafs and Belle and Christopher Talkin', and then we'll have brunch at Bilbo Baggins with the hobbits, all of us all together.