after one long season of waiting

I don't have the attention span for anything substantive tonight, so instead I'm nabbing a meme from zolac_no_miko and look_alive because... well... it's kind of awesome.

I would like all my LJ friends to comment about how you got to know me. But I want you to LIE. That's right. Just make it up. If you'd like, copy this to your journal so I can do the same.

It seems to be about time for me to get off the whole travelly-thinky-talky go-round for a bit. I will try to do this with as little pointless, gripe-y chatter about work as possible.

As such, I wanted to bring Save the Words to everyone's attention, because 1) words! adorable, adoptable words!, 2) it's November and if we're pounding out words we might as well give some a leg up from obscurity, and 3) go to 1, repeat.

I've adopted sinapistic, in part because it sounds kind of foreboding, and also because I like mustard. I mean, really, where can you go wrong with a foreboding-sounding word for "consisting of mustard"? Plus it's going to be a challenge to use to casually. "The Sunparlour Players are champions of pursuits both musical and sinapistic"? I'll have to think about it.

I also recommend "piladex." I had no idea there was a word for "a game in which an inflated bag is hit with hands to be kept aloft". It'd be a shame to lose a word that useful! For now I'm limiting myself to adopting only one word, though. At least until I leverage sinapistic back into common parlance.

I also owe apple_pathways a meme response:

1. Reply to this post and I will assign you a letter.
2. List/upload five songs you love that begin with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions

I was given the letter S for sanity, which is, as always, questionable:

1. Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective
2. Scythian Empires - Andrew Bird
3. Sleeping on the Roof - The Flaming Lips
4. Seven Swans - Sufjan Stevens
5. Shortly Before the End - OK Go

I only changed each of those numbers about three times (I keep finding more I want to include! What of Sax Rohmer #1? Samson? Scenic World? San Francisco! Santa Fe! Starálfur! Some Fantastic! (I'm going to stop looking at my library now, because this is getting bad.) But hey, I managed to do it without including any songs from the Suburbs. That felt like cheating for some reason.

Also, I have an ulterior motive for number five up there. I kind of want an excuse to talk about my odd fascination with Of the Blue Colour of the Sky. Because, all right, OK Go is like, the one big-name band I knew before they were famous. I was stalking They Might be Giants, it was 2002 or so, and they were opening for them, and they always hung out outside the venue, being friendly and liberal with the hugs and so I adored them. Also their music was pretty good. (Hello, My Treacherous Friends was one of the main songs on the soundtrack to my high school existence.) By their second album I was kind of over it, though, and I let the internet have its way with them. I basically wouldn't have ended up with Of the Blue Colour... if I hadn't had a bunch of emusic downloads left at the end of last month. And... and... strangely, even though it is nothing like what I originally liked them for, I think it's actually a better album than either of the previous ones. I don't necessarily want to hard-wire it into my life, but it comes together as an album wonderfully. It's like, after all this time, they've finally hit their stride with making an album, rather than just clever singles and videos. (Am I already working on my Best Albums of 2010 list? Maaaaybe. Is it easier than last year's? Heck yes it is. Darnit, 2010.)

Today has been an adventure, dear internets. And I've realized that it makes me happy to feel like I'm on an adventure. I got up this morning, hopped into my interview clothes, and headed off to the bus stop. I felt like a ridiculous yuppie, and it got me to wondering if this apartment full of blonde girls at the bottom of the park is a harbinger of Things to Come for the people in this neighborhood. This is the direction of "progress" (or more accurately, gentrification) from the loop, since we're out of space to the north that isn't Evanston. I hope I didn't worry anyone, because the fact is I rather like this neighborhood the way it is. Except the blocks to the west of us could stand to be a few shades lighter on the crime map (as in, not something like red).

The first interview was more of a barrage of tests, interspersed with friendly conversation with the recruiter, who, sadly, didn't have anything for me at the moment, but promised to keep looking. I also found out, from the battery of tests, that there are things that can be done with Word that I never imagined, and that apparently even though I haven't used Excel for 6 years, my skills in it are better than my skills in Word (what?). Also, I can type, officially, 86 words per minute. Which is a freaking lot. I've been saying 65 forever. And apparently that's a lie. (That's right, Chicago. I type freaking fast. Now give me a job. I know you need a fast typist somewhere.)

The second interview was in an office on the 35th floor of the Prudential Building. The Prudential Building, in addition to overlooking Milennium Park, also has a view of the lake, and most of the South Loop. I'm not sure I'd have paid any attention to my interview if the office had had windows. But, thankfully, the room I was interviewed in didn't have windows, and it went fair enough. There is another round of interviews after this, and I may perhaps get called back, depending on how they react to my answers to their application survey. It reminded me a bit of the UofC application, in that it had some rather weird questions, including a bit where I had to come up with sentences for words, and it was very difficult for me not to write very weird ones. I think the worst I did was for trite, which was something like "Her treatment of the situation was very trite; she paid it no more mind than she did her neighbor's cat." Which really doesn't illustrate any understanding of the word, and is in fact an almost entirely wrong use of it (except that I would defend it by saying that her attention to the neighbor's cat was scant due to the repetition of her seeing it, and therefore trite). But I couldn't come up with a good actual sentence to use, and I liked the sound of that sentence, so hopefully they won't stop too long to think about how it's actually wrong. In fact, my biggest error (aside from having to call back after the interview to give the secretary the phone numbers for my references, as the page had fallen out of my notebooke) was probably the random answer I gave to their "Anything else we should know?" question (which was phrased in such a way as to encourage somewhat odd answers). It went something like "I can't in good conscience leave this blank, so you should know: * The 8 key on your calculator is stubborn. * I keep wanting to sketch the view from here, but I'm a horrible artist. * What I lack in artistic talent I make up for in wit. * Though sometimes it fails me on applications." I can imagine the conversation regarding this response going something like "And here's evilhippo's application. She misused the word trite and... appears to have been channeling Oscar Wilde at the end of her application. It's a shame he's about a hundred years past his prime." And then it'll be thrown in the bin. But at least I got to look out their windows. And I can hold out hope for the recruiter to find me a job.

Also, since I should make note of this, the second company did... get this... infomercials. The irony would be amazing (warning: link contains eye-bleeding color combinations, pop-up ads, and writing done by me approximately 9 years ago).

And, because I haven't done a meme in a while, and the results of this one, I believe, rather adeptly illuminate the precise nature of my current career problem, I present to you... The Internets Don't Know What I Should Do With Myself Either:

1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top ten results

1. Office Machine Repairer
2. Technical Writer
3. Business Systems Analyst
4. Writer
5. Computer Trainer
6. Desktop Publisher
7. Video Game Developer
8. Historian
9. Furniture Finisher
10. ESL Teacher
( And because it gets better )

Please, someone tell me they got results as mixed-up as mine. Because.... I'm not sure any of those overlap in groups larger than threes, and those groups don't seem to overlap each other at all. No wonder I'm so confused. Furniture finisher is in the top ten. What the heck? I have not seen anyone take this quiz and get such a mish-mash of results.

Obviously, I should drop everything and become a magician. (Which is tempting now, as I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, and though it took me a while to get into it, it's probably one of the best books I've read in quite a long time, and even though I'm not finished yet, I have a strong urge to recommend it to everyone I know, and probably will recommend it in great detail after I finish it.)

I feel so freaking sick, but I'm really not. Perhaps it is exhaustion? Perhaps it is because I am played by Bill Cosby in a sitcom?

My LiveJournal Sitcom
novel and popsicle (PBS, 5:00): evilhippo (Bill Cosby) buys muffins instead of PDAs, ruining rainbowgirl28 (Mary Stuart Masterson)'s day. That night, yoi (Phil Hartman) tries to seduce stephalina (Farrah Fawcett) at a diner. In the next town over, sketchyheart (Matthew McConaughey) tells tmbg (Jude Law) about Scientology. Later that day, ok_go (Mary Tyler Moore) lets chocolatemoose (Leelee Sobieski) borrow a fork to impress a hairdresser. That same day, guster (Jerry Seinfeld)'s new shirt bleeds in the wash and stains all of kovie (Bebe Neuwirth)'s underwear pink. TV-G.
What's Your LiveJournal Sitcom? (by rfreebern)

It's rather amusing when bands are played by people of the completely opposite sex... or when they're played by a bizarre comedian. Hm.. So, Ben Folds rocked last night. I meant to write about it before, but just didn't get the chance to on account of celebrating people's birthdays with fire hazards and stolen t-shirts. I ended up going to the concert with my friend from French class, and by chance we ended up there an hour before doors, so we got pretty good seats. The only weird thing about the night was how everyone couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to be standing or sitting. The general atmosphere pointed towards more standing, but I guess people were confused. I know I was confused. But it was fun, nonetheless. Far more laid-back than the other concerts I've been to. The crowd participation was great.

Oh! And I got my comments back on my second paper for Media Asthetics. I got an 86, which is far better than the 79 I got last time. My professor said mine was the most improved paper. I still have two more to write, so I hope I haven't set the bar too high for myself. I can, afterall, only clear about 4'6", though I have been told I can hit 5 if I try.

I feel rather bad that I missed the track team dinner tonight, but I felt like crap and decided I shouldn't pass this cold I have on to everyone else. I didn't cough on anyone at practice, but we weren't all that close to one another, then, either. At dinner, we would've been crammed into an apartment. All 11 of us. I'm not sure, but I think my high school track team had more people. That's insane. I wonder if we had a track meet against my high school, who would win. Probably us, since we're allowed to pole vault and triple jump. And we have more serious people. Hmm...

Bah, I think I'll go take a shower now. Yaaay, shower.