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emmanation

You like me! Of course, you probably don't know me very well.

Archive for the ‘it's all about me’ Category

more of the same

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Is it possible to cure writers block by writing something that isn’t what you started out trying to write? (Even if that thing that you write is a run on sentence that requires several seconds to parse.)

I am writing words now, so technically, yes, it does seem to be true, but the true test will come momentarily when I return to the thing I actually need to be writing.

The thing that I need to be writing has the potential to be sort of a big deal (to me) and I’m not quite ready to talk about it yet, but it’s taking up all of my time.

Oh, also? I applied for a professor job at a community college today. That I am willing to talk about, but I find myself with very little to say. I filled out an application, wrote a page about why I’d be good at the job, a page about my teaching philosophy, and then submitted the whole shebang along with my resume and transcript. It was very exciting – but it’s possible that I’m letting Community cloud my judgement. Anyway, even if Jeff Winger doesn’t show up, I think it’s a job I would both enjoy and perform well.

That is if psychic detective is completely off the table.

P.S. Our toilet is bound and determined to run, and it’s going to drive me fucking insane. In my townhouse the toilet ran but a) you could fix it by jiggling the handle and b) I always blamed it on the ghost that lived there with me, so it never really affected my life. This? This is either my fault, Crockett’s fault, or no one’s fault, and when one is faced with a running toilet, one does not simply blame no one. And the handle jiggle is completely useless. It’s very irritating.

Happy 2012!

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

I actually don’t know very much about the whole Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy thing, and I’m scared to look into it just in case  - you know – it’s real and then I have to decide what to do with my final ten months.

Anyway, last year of forever or not (probably not), I’m not making any resolutions this year. I want to resolve to be a better blogger, and to resolve to finish my book, and resolve to not take things at school so personally. I want to resolve to exercise every day, because it is an important a commitment as finishing my homework – for both my physical and mental health. I want to resolve to figure out what makes Cloey puke on the couch and stop her from doing it.

I’m not going to officially resolve any of those things, though, because I have no particular dedication to resolutions and I’m just as likely to do them just by virtue of wanting to do them. Which is to say, slim-to-moderately likely.

I guess we’ll see.

Also up in 2012 – graduation! A job, probably! My 31st birthday in two weeks!

What’s new for you?

these books, they are audible!

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

In the category of things that I do way more often than people around me think I do, there are only a few items.

  • Grocery shop.
  • Play Minesweeper.
  • Listen to audio books.

Boom. Done. Everything else is either something I do an expected amount, or something I do an a larger than average amount but everyone totally knows (things that fall into that category – gossip when drinking, cook).

Grocery shopping – wev. Minesweeper? Awesome – I play it while I walk the dogs, while I’m in class (sometimes), occasionally while watching television – really any time that I need a little distraction.

Audio books, though? People, are you audio book people?

There are different ways to listen to audio books. My mom, for example, sits down and listens, while doing nothing else.

That’s the wrong way.

The right way is to listen to audio books while you’re doing other things. My personal favorites? Driving, walking, and working out.

Thing that sounds like a segueway but isn’t: yesterday, the hot water heater in my townhouse busted. The tank rusted through, and I had to go buy a new one and pay someone to install it. My reaction to that was… well, first it was to cry. My more measured reaction was to spend some time with Mint.com, assessing my expenditures and looking for places to cut a few corners.

Mint informed for that for the last 32 months, I have spent an average of $30 a month on audio books. (I use Audible.com). With average Audible pricing, which is much more affordable than buying books on CD, that works out to about 2.3 books per month. I rarely invest in a book that’s shorter than 15 hours, because I blow through them so fast.

All this math means that I pay for (and listen to) about 35 hours of audio books per month. Not to mention that I inevitably re-listen to something I already bought at least once a month, when I’m out of credits at Audible and have to wait until the 4th of the next month, when my new one comes. That brings my monthly listening total to ~ 50 hours.

That’s 1.6 hours a day.

I’m awake for about 16 hours a day.

I spend 10% of my time listening to books on tape.

Other than doing homework (and watching tv, which is what I do while watching homework), I cannot think of another thing that I spend 10% of my time doing.

When I saw the dollar signs on Mint, my thought was to cut back on my audio books – but here’s the thing. My books make driving to and from school tolerable. They make waiting for Cloey to fully explore the scents of some recently peed on bush interesting. They give me something to listen to at the gym other than the guy grunting on the pull up machine.

Music, of course, would do all this – but books are stories.

I’m officially setting aside $30 a month to support my habit. The cutbacks will have to come from elsewhere.

I mean, who needs haircuts?

 

new tattoo YAY

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

All the pics are over on MBD – but here’s one. I LOVE the tattoo.

IMG 2561

 

stories

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Today I’m going to my local tattoo shop for a consultation on my new tattoo.

I have a few already, and they’re all representative of either my personal state in one way or another. I sort of intended to explain them, but I’m not sure I actually have pictures of all of them at my fingertips while I sit in class right now.

My new one, though, I picked solely because I think it’s pretty.

I can’t tell if this is a slippery slope. If pretty is my new criteria, I could be covered by next year.