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Weekend’s wisking me away!

To celebrate my birthday (early, LOL) Jim, Jessie and I went to Bento for dinner. Had a great time, our cook had performed several tricks I hadn’t seen before, including “heartbeat” and “heartburn”; my favorite bit was when he was playing around with the eggs, after flipping, bouncing, and finally cracking each, he took each shell and smacked it hard and said “Bad egg! Who’s your daddy?” LOL! That cracked me and Jim up. (Hey, I’m a sucker for a good show.)

We had a very good time, as we always do at Bento. The food is excellent, the service is excellent. It’s undoubtedly one of my favorite Metro-area restaurants; definitely my favorite in Gardendale. The family that sat at the table with us were very nice. They had kids that went to school with Jessie; she instantly bonded with the little girl sitting beside her. Those two chatted and played the whole evening — she had a blast.

When dinner was over, the owner and our cook marched throughout the restaurant beating a drum and stopped at our table. They sang “Happy Birthday” to me in English, then again in Japanese. The Japanese version is my favorite!

Jim gave me part of my birthday present early last night. The new Spiderman 2.1 DVD set and the second disk set of the Forever Knight trilogy.

Sweet! :mrgreen:

My mother had called yesterday wanting to know if I’d meet with her and Dad for my birthday. Quite honestly, that surprised me, as they did nothing last year, and nothing was done for any of the birthdays celebrated so far this year — why now? ??:

She was supposed to call me with the time and place but she hasn’t yet, so I’m assuming those plans have fallen through. I’m also assuming they’ll do what they did last year and send me a card. Guess I’ll watch the mail. *shrug* Jim and I had originally planned to go out tonight, but that’s sort of up in the air as several friends have expressed wishes for us to get together with them later tonight to go out.

Jim’s brother and his family are still in town, but leaving in a couple of days, so his mom has planned a big to-do tomorrow. We’re supposed to take the kids bowling, then BBQ if the weather’s decent. (Considering it’s storming right now, not sure what tomorrow’s going to be like.) I’m really looking forward to spending the day with them tomorrow for my birthday.

I gotta say it’s an improvement from last year’s. (though having a job right now would be nice)

Next weekend is the Alabama A-Day game, so Jess and I are really looking forward to that. Any other Bama bloggers going?

And my obsession for next week is …

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Hehe, Jim was showing it to me last night so I thought I’d install it today and give it a try. The install files took a while to download (over 3 gig, yikes!!). But the installation was easy-breezy and runs pretty well on my machine — which is considered “outdated” by my geekier gamer nerd friends’ standards.

It features a changing weather and day/night system, extremely detailed worlds, wonderfully created, animated, and textured models, and just an overall excellent re-creation of Middle-Earth. It’s pretty much beta right now. Turbine opened it up to anyone and everyone, and it’s free until the official launch: April 24th. So, I have a little over a week to play with it and decide if I want to make the jump from my beloved FPSs and RPGs to MMORPGs.

Between me and you, I seriously doubt it and until I get a job it’s a luxury I’d have to do without.

But hey, for now it’s a new toy for me to play with. :mrgreen: Check out the character I created this afternoon:

Hiriasysiel

Pet peeve

Ok, I answered an ad in Craigslist a few nights ago regarding a customer service position. It turns out that it’s basically a work-from-home sales position — thanks, but no thanks.

What really chapped my hide was that in every correspondence with this person, she spelled my name wrong. EVERY TIME! Considering that I sign my name at the end of every email, AND it’s on my resume, AND it is listed in the “From” field in the headers of every single email I send out, HOW fucking hard can it be to take the extra one second of effort and spell it correctly!?!?!?

That’s most probably my biggest pet peeve, and is THE quickest way to turn me off to something.

I know exactly how he feels …

I had a horrible headache last night and unfortunately woke up this morning and still had it. I’m sure it has something to do with the rain. Every time we have rain that just seems to linger on, I get a headache. One doctor told me that it had something to do with the barometric pressure going up and down … I don’t care what it is, just make it go away! ;P

Not a whole lot happening on the job front. I had a couple of places leave me messages today, which is pretty good because for a while I wasn’t hitting anything. One was from a recruiter in Hoover, another from some company in California that offers telecom audit services. (not sure why THEY contacted me, as I couldn’t find a local office for them *shrug*) Well, if anything that’s another coupla leads while I’m waiting on *prospective hopeful* to call me back!

I slept off and on all day, so those of you who left msgs and/or emailed, I’ll get to it eventually. ;P Lucky for me I got a good man … Jim “cooked” dinner tonight. (Hooray, BK! LOL)

CSS Naked Day ended early

OK, I decided to call it quits a coupla hours early. Not having my pretty skin was driving me mad. :mrgreen:

(That, and I’m expecting a couple of prospective employers to visit my site in the next day or so and I wouldn’t want to present my online portfolio looking quite so bare. ;P)

Job ads

There’s a TON of sites out there, and to be honest I’ve given up on the larger “spam senders” like Career Builder and Monster. I’ve been using a job search engine called Indeed. For the most part, it finds results on larger job sites like CB, Monster, as well as local stuff through The Birmingham News jobs site. Not bad!

I’m still waiting to hear back from one place that I’ve interviewed with 3 times … if I had more time, I’d hold out for them as long as it took. Unfortunately I’m going to HAVE to get something soon. Can’t get too picky when bills start piling up. ;P

I tried Craigslist recently. I used to cruise there regularly, but hadn’t been back in a while — after all, that’s how I found my last job. ??:

Anyways, there’s always part-time and other work-from-home stuff listed on there. I ran across one that caught my eye: get paid to blog. Get paid for sitting on my ass and yacking about anything and everything? I’m down with that. :cool:

This is a first…

I received a call from a lady from a recruiting company. I apparently had sent them a copy of my resume a while back and they had a job they thought I might be interested in. Sounded interesting, but what got me was when I was asked for a good time of day to talk with them. I mentioned that I’m home all day and between 8 and 5 is fine. I was then asked if I had a webcam.

:shock: Do whaaaaa?

I told her that I did, but didn’t know where it was and asked why she wanted to know. It seems they prefer interviewing by web conferencing — as opposed to phone interviews or face to face I guess.

Different … definitely different! :lol:

Going stir-crazy

I swear, I’m quickly running out of things to do here at home. I spent most of the day today watching old Chuck Norris movies and making Shrinky Dinks. LOL! I think I’m going stir-crazy. If I don’t get another job soon, I’m going to die from boredom.

Thank God for my Ladies Night Out group; going out every coupla weeks with them has helped keep me sane. And I almost ALWAYS need the time away!

That reminds me, I forgot to get on and post about our St. Patty’s meetup. We were supposed to eat at The Melting Pot, but when we arrived at 5pm, we were told that we needed a reservation and that they were “booked solid.” (However, their website does not mention this … and it has LOUSY directions!!!) So we went next door to Classic Joe’s Restaurant instead — hell, they practically waved us over! We were greeted warmly and treated to some absolutely WONDERFUL martini’s and some festive live music.

Funny thing: we were sitting where we could see into The Melting Pot, and they never filled! We ate and talked for well over 2 hours and saw several tables that went unfilled! They could have easily taken us (and our money). Oh well, their loss … we probably spent more at Classic Joe’s, but had a fabulous time. The food was good — not my taste really, but it was good.

We’re supposed to go back in a few weeks, but to be honest I don’t care that much for them after that experience. *shrug*

Apparently I’m crazy…

Jim gave me a funny look the other night because I started “talking houses again.” Apparently I’m crazy. He says that until I find a stable job (he didn’t like the last one and was against me taking it, but never told me … go figure!), we can’t look at houses. I laughed and told him we can still look and once I find another job, and we’re married, and all the bills are paid off, we can seriously look at putting something down on a new place. I started looking at Ellijay Real Estate again — I would love to find something like that here. Heck, we *could* save up a bit and look at Cahaba Heights or Mtn Brook … but then again, I like it here and it’s a good school system.

I don’t think it will be long before I’m working again. I have an interview today that sounds very promising, and a second interview Monday with a place I’m DYING to work for.

(Wish me luck!!)

Poor Jim, I’m leaving him with Jessie tonight. My Ladies Night Out meetup group leader set up drinks this afternoon at The Blue Monkey, so as soon as I’m done with my interview, I’m heading over that way. I’ve always loved Cobb Lane, and “the monkey” has some AWESOME martinis! :mrgreen:

(Pssssst! Teresa!!! You’re coming too, right? )

Website changes

I spent the better part of the weekend working on my sites. I’ve added a lot of “fluff” to this one; a lot of personal stuff … things I’m into, hobbies, charities/causes I support, etc. I’ve added several FanListing buttons — hehe, and have yet to start adding my fave books, movies, anime, or bands!

I’ve started really promoting my site more, so I’ve joined several blog directories. At the exuberant nudgings of a friend, I joined MyBlogLog and have my recent visitors hidden away in the Scales, Visitors & Linkers snipper on the left menu. :mrgreen:

I’ve added my site to a few more WebRings and am looking for other venues (suggestions are most appreciated). I’ve also started promoting my new MySpace profile. I decided to make a new “less personal” profile for the sole purpose of promoting this website, my freelance works, and my artwork. So far, so good.

My next project will be a much-needed bbPress upgrade for Now We’re Cookin’s forums. I’ll have to re-do my template from scratch, which I am NOT looking forward to doing. ;P

Oh well, considering I’ve cleaned nearly everything in the house, I’m finding myself LOOKING for shit to do in between job interviews and reading php manuals.

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