Posted 3:04 PM by Danielle
I'm going home early. My feet hurt. Blah.

Posted 4:13 PM by Danielle
Poor Scotty, his company laid him off today. This economy shit fuckin sucks man. I suppose we all deserve it after 5 years of unadulterated economic climbing (more or less) but are we any better off than the poor fucks who graduated from college in the early 90's (like my darling Josh) or mid-80's? Let's talk about the differences.

My Dad
All throughout my high school (1989-1993) and college years (1993-1997), my dad only managed to find work about 1/3 of the time. On one hand, that enabled me to go to Hampshire and get mega-financial aid because we had like no income. On the other hand, it sucks to have like no income. Since college, he's been working pretty steadily. He was finally able to take a break and visit Argentina but that was more him realizing he needed to take a break and refuse work.

My Mom
My mother has a different, better paying job this decade and is actually more financially sound, what with having a husband now, and some property, but she still acts like she's living in the depression. I think I managed to convince her that it's not worth it to drive to 3 different supermarkets to find the cheapest breakfast cereal, but she still buys the sandpaper toilet paper and calculate her miles per gallon when she gases up. My mother could win PowerBall and still clip coupons so let's move on to the next subject.

Me
During high school, it was impossible for me to find a part-time job but that had more to do with the fact that I was in school every day until 3:30 or later and that I didn't have wheels (let alone a driver's license!) and less with the economy. In college, I experienced trouble finding even temp work. When I graduated and decided to look for a job, I had a few boring options. And getting my job at Concrete was pretty much a stroke of good timing- calling David G. at a good time and catching Aaron C. before he turned into Super Duper Asshole guy. Everything was pretty much uphill from there. Then I got fucked by the poor management decisions and one ridiculously inexperienced manager. I fell into this Avon deal kind of accidentally too, and Concrete's officially closing their doors sort of forced me into permanence here.

OK, so maybe I'm not a good example either.

This is what I know. I've been laid off twice- once by an idiot who didn't understand that putting your complicated database-driven executive search firm online doesn't happen overnight and once by a start-up that was one of the first to fall, affected by other fallen start-ups. Now I'm seeing major lay-offs at my third long term job and I've been here going on 6 months (plus those 6 months as a temp). I feel like my job is safe because my boss would be totally lost without an assistant and they can't really replace me with a much cheaper employee. I can probably stick around here for at least another two years, in this position, or perhaps as a planner. If they keep slashing the budget, we're not going to continue having the occaisional fancy dinner and they might start to restrict how frequently B. can work from the NY office. But they wouldn't cut my job, would they?

Well, at least Josh's job is safe. He's produces revenue for the hospital so he pays for himself and then some.

Oy vey.

I need to take a break from thinking about this and get back to work.

Posted 3:51 PM by Danielle
Kerin replied:

thank you so much.
I love you too.

Posted 11:25 AM by Danielle
From an email I just sent to Kerin, thanking her for doing our Save the Date cards for the wedding.

Thank you so much for doing this. I know we're going to love everything and I really like working with you so closely on this. It's important for me that you're helping me with this wedding stuff. Of course, you have more experience than I do but it also helps me feel closer to you, even though you are so far away.

I love you K-dog!

Danielle

Posted 10:11 AM by Danielle
I can't stop listening to The Be Good Tanyas "Blue Horse" CD. I finally forked over the bucks to buy their CD after Kerin flatly told me she wouldn't copy the CD for me because they could really use the money. She had put two of their songs on a CD mix she sent me around the new year. At first my reaction was "oh no, crunchy hippie music" but after listening to the CD a few times, the Be Good Tanyas "Littlest Birds" and "Only in the Past" kept sticking in my head. I downloaded two other songs from their web site. Then I realized I had to have the whole album.

They're three earthy yet vintage clothes wearing Canuck chicks who could have gone to Hampshire [College], playing banjos, mandolins, fiddles, sort of mumbling while harmonizing. The reviews I've read put them in the "roots" category which is kind of meaningless to me because I haven't heard any other roots-y groups. Definitely check them out and let me know what you think.

Posted 9:49 AM by Danielle
Have you read or heard anything about these books? I saw them at B&N last night and they looked interesting. I'm going to try to find them on Half.com but I'd like some recommendations on which to start on first when I finish Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Comeback Cities by P. Gragan and T. Proscio

The Millennial City by M. Magnet

Trust Us, We're Experts! by S. Rampton and J. Stauber

Posted 11:39 AM by Danielle
Did I tell you that Justin dislocated his shoulder on Sunday? He was playing football with his friends and it popped out. It happened to him when he was snowboarding around Christmas. This makes it the third time. The doctor he saw (unlike the other times, he couldn't pop it back in himself) said he should look into having surgery. Josh looked up some specialists at his hospital and I gave Justin their names.

In other sick news, my dad called me from Argentina on Sunday, telling me he has pneumonia. Ugh- how terrible. But he said that he saw a doctor, they took x-rays, prescribed antibiotics, he's resting, his aunt is looking after him, etc. He's flying back to the states on Thursday. I hope his ears don't kill him from the air pressure. I had a cold or something the last time I flew and the pain in my ears from the air pressure was so terrible it made me cry.

D. left me a VM yesterday saying that I can't go to Atlanta for that week long business trip next week. I know I'm imagining it, but I feel she sounded nearly gleeful when she said, "I'm going to release your hotel room now!" Then this morning my boss B. followed up with a VM about it. I really suspect that D. didn't want me to go and that B. asked if she was going to need help next week with upcoming projects, D. said yes, even though she probably could have handled it herself. Maybe I'm imagining it all. But I really do believe that D. resents me, for my youthful energy and approach and possibly fears that I will try to take over her job one of these days even though there's a snowball chance in hell because of that (nor do I want her job!). She's not a bad person at all; in fact, she's quite nice and actually a little too chipper for me to feel comfortable with. She just has this way of second guessing me, micro-managing me, and in general, keeping me down.

I really wanted to go to that class next week in Atlanta because I have family there and after the February class in Atlanta, there won't be another class I can go to this year. This will make two failed attempts of me trying to further my Avon education, only to have it cancelled at the last minute. I am crossing my fingers that D. and B. won't find another reason to cancel me out of the next class I try to attend.

Then my mom tells me that my cousins Lynne & David were putting their dog Travis to sleep. This is the faithful kind dog who in the last few years has grown more and more senile, arthritic and generally, pained and confused. They were going to tell the girls (Meghan 10, Brooke 6)that he died at the vet's. Then my mother calls at 10 last night to tell me that they didn't put the dog to sleep after all. Apparently, as my mother put it, Travis had an 11th hour reprieve and the doctor gave him some medication that would help him but might damage his liver. Oy vey, put the poor dog out of his misery.

All in all, this made for an unpleasant yesterday and I am trying to adjust. I have my therapist tonight and then I'm going to dine alone at Ollie's (unless I can interest Scott in joining me) and then veg out for a few hours at Barnes & Noble, trying to figure out how to spend my $10 gift card. Or maybe I'll go to Starschmucks and try to make a dent in Book 4 of Harry Potter. That shit is good but damn it's heavy. How the hell can little kids tote that tome around? Maybe I shouldn't try to make a dent in it. After all, I don't want to hurry up and finish it until I know there's Book 5 to read. What else should I read?

Josh made this really good braised pork cutlet and fennel dish last night. He braised the shit out of the fennel- so much so that it didn't even taste like fennel anymore, which I liked because I don't like that licorice-fennel taste. Anyway, we decided that we'd rather have it with chicken because it's more flavorful.

Well, I gotta go cancel my Atlanta flight now.

Posted 4:36 PM by Danielle
This soap business is not going as smoothly as I had hoped. On both of the batches I've done so far, I've managed to add way too much green coloring so now it looks like a bar of green jello. One batch was lime-mint scented, the other is lime-coconut. Both are extremely green. Since I only ordered two molds, I have to wait until they harden so I can take them out and do another load. What the hell was I thinking?

Plus, I fucked up my manicure trying to pick off the melted soap on the bowl from the double boiler. Note to self-: everything melts more cleanly in the microwave.

Josh is out shopping for dinner ingredients. Pork chops with fennel. Last night's burgers and beer were good.

We watched "Blow Out" on IFC when we got home. Apparently, both "The Conversation" and "Blow Out" are based on the Antonioni film "Blow Up" about a guy who unintentionally photographs a crime scene. In "The Conversation," Gene Hackman is a surveillance expert who is hired to record a conversation between a young couple and tries to figure out why when he suspects that he put them in danger. In "Blow Out," John Travolta plays a sound man who is out recording sound for a bad B-flick he's working on when he witnesses a car's tire blow out and drive off of a bridge. He's convinced he heard a gun shot right before the blow out and he's got the recording to prove it, but no one is interested. In any case, I love "The Conversation" by Francis Ford Coppola and I liked the first half of "Blow Out" but it was not as strong a film as the other. Now we have to find "Blow Up" so my internal dialogue can come full circle.
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