My new car

This post is mainly for Karen, since she won't believe that I have a new car until she sees pictures of it. Now, I don't have a digital camera at all, and I don't think my camera phone would take a decent picture of it, so I had to troll online to find this picture.

I stole this picture off of Wikipedia. My car is a slightly lighter shade of blue, and doesn't have what looks to be a PA license plate on it. But this is my car, pretty much. I'm very happy with it. It's so much nicer than my old car, probably because it runs without sounding like I'm strangling a cat.

So, there, Karen. This is all for you. And anyone else that might be interested in seeing what my car looks like. :)

It's been a long while...

Yup, I'm finally updating my blog. What can I say? My life has been busy of late, with starting a new job, finding a new place to live, getting used to a brand new city. Lots of changes in a very short time.

I really don't have a whole lot to say. I love my new job. I love living in Madison. I don't love the fact that my car has decided that it wants to die one of these days. I told it (because, yes, I do talk to inanimate objects - luckily they don't talk back) that it could die once I got a decent paying job. I just didn't expect it to take me quite so seriously.

So, I've been doing a bit of car shopping recently, and I'm hoping that some of my friends may have some input on cars for me. I'm looking at a couple different makes, namely Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, and Saturn. If any of you out there have any opinions, experience, or things you've heard about any of these models, feel free to pass it along. I can use all the help I can get. Other than that, not a whole lot else is new, except for the job. But considering that it's getting quite late, I don't feel like I have the time to go into great detail. I'll just say that it's been great, and I can't believe I've been at this job for 2.5 months already. Time flies when you actually enjoy your job.

Anyway, any comments from friends, or even random strangers, about cars would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! :)

Long Time, No Post

Man, it's been a very long time since I've actually updated this thing. I'm bored at work right now, and I can't think of anything else to do since I'm waiting for my boss to tell me what he thinks on something I just made, so I figured I have enough news to post a new entry.

First of all, I think I'm going to discontinue my other Blogger blog on TV shows since the one on tvguide.com gets many, many more hits than the one here. Of course, if anyone has a reason why I should not discontinue it, feel free to let me know. I'll leave it open for a couple more weeks, just to see if I get any comments there.

Second, I'm going home next weekend! Unfortunately it's not for the best of circumstances. My mom is having surgery on her back to fix some bulging discs and hoping relieve a pinched nerve. Amazingly, it's only an outpatient procedure, but I still feel like I should be home to help her recovery. I'm only planning on being gone a week, but I'm being very flexible in when I actually come back.

Of course, if I had my way, I'd probably never come back. I'm so very tired of my job at the moment. I feel no fulfillment from it, and I basically feel like I'm killing time here until I get to leave for a different job.

It doesn't help that I'm not getting any good feedback from any of the teaching jobs I applied to. No one wants to hire me as a math instructor because the Midwest has very strict requirements for their math instructors. So, now I've put my resume on Monster and CareerBuilder, and will be looking at the job posting there in the near future, just so I can send out my resumes all over the place.

In fact, I'm so sick of my current job that I'm looking at any and every job that sounds even remotely interesting. Management, administrative assistant, teacher, researcher, whatever. The only things I'm ruling out are menial retail work (cashier, stockperson, etc.) and anything related to food service. Otherwise it's all fair game.

Beyond that, nothing is new with me. My life is pretty boring, I must say. But, that's ok for right now. I'd rather be able to do nothing than be so busy that I have no free time whatsoever.

Random Update

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted, so I figured it was time to update this blog. I don't know why I'm so bad at updating this thing lately. I guess nothing of much importance has been happening in my life. Well, that and I blog nearly every day on TVGuide.com, so that takes up a lot of my writing time.

The only reason I'm updating right now is that I don't feel like doing work at the moment. Yeah, I know that's very shocking. ;)

I did hear back from two jobs I'd applied for. One called to make sure I was still interesting in the job and told me they'd be calling back in the middle of March (which is soon!) to possibly set up an interview. The other emailed me to tell me that I didn't make the interview cut. That one saddens me a little, but not too much, because that school was on the low end of places I wanted to live. It was in far western Minnesota, right on the MN/ND border, near Fargo. So, yeah, a bit too far away from home for me, but I needed to send my resume out to all sorts of places.

So, now I'm waiting to hear back about that other job, as well as to hear anything from any of the other schools. At this point, I really don't care what I hear (although if everyone rejects me, I'll be devastated), I just want to hear from them. I'm tired of playing the waiting game.

I guess that's it from me. Like I said, my life is pretty boring, so I really have nothing new to report. Hopefully I will soon, though. No promises or anything!

I Hate Valentine's Day and Other Musings

I've been a slacker again with this blog. I never feel as if I have anything of importance to say anymore. Plus, I've been writing a lot on my other blog and my TVGuide.com blog, so writing here hasn't been as important. But, I guess it's time, yet again, to put some sort of update in this blog. Besides, I actually have the time to do it.

Apparently we're supposed to be getting a major winter storm here tomorrow into Wednesday. All I can say is it's about damn time. I'm looking forward to a good amount of snow. I've heard predictions up to a foot, which is pretty exciting. It reminds me of my first year here, where there were two snowstorms that each dumped about a foot of snow within a couple weeks. I think that may have been the only pleasurable part of my first year here. (First year of grad school totally sucks.)

Anyway, I'm hoping to see lots of snow, although that means digging my car out will be a pain. That also means I should drive it in to campus either Wednesday or Thursday so that when the plow comes through, my car isn't buried under more snow. We'll see what happens.

The one bad thing about a large amount of snow is that it's going to be a real bitch getting to the bus stop in the morning. Plus, I don't have good shoes for being out in the snow. I really should have thought about that before now, but we had such a mild and dry winter up until now that I put the thought of getting boots out of my mind. My shoes should be good enough, though, provided I don't have to walk in snow too much. If I need to, I'll just lean them up against a heater while I'm at home to dry them out.

In other news, the job search continues on. I think I've sent out about 15 resumes for teaching jobs in WI, IL, IN, and MN. I'm hoping at least one of them sticks. I just want a real job where I feel like a useful member of wherever I'm working. I don't feel that now, and I don't really like it. I just feel like the time I spend at work is wasted. Nor do I feel very useful or necessary to my job. I don't know. I just want things to be different. I'm definitely ready for a change, whatever that may be. As long as I don't have to get a crappy retail job, I'll be relatively happy.

Let's see. What else? Oh, yeah. I hate Valentine's Day. I know I've written about this before, but I have to say it again. I don't like how it's this day where couples are celebrated and singles aren't. It makes absolutely no sense to me. The only reason I see for it is for Hallmark to have yet another holiday where they make money. Maybe I'm just bitter because I don't have a relationship, or any sort of dating life whatsoever. Of course the first half of February sucks already because I'm reminded of my father, whose birthday was last week. (For those that don't know, my father is a selfish jackass that only wants a relationship with me now that he and Mom are divorced. It's a long, sordid story, which would probably make a good novel, and I don't want to get into it right now.) So, it's just hit after hit for the first couple weeks of February.

I've added yet another new thing to my plate. Not only am I blogging on TVGuide.com, I'm also writing a recap for a soap on soapcentral.com. I recap Wednesday's One Life to Live. It's a volunteer position, so I don't get paid, but it's kind of fun to do. Plus, I figure if I get my writing out there enough, maybe someone will notice me and hire me to do some writing. That's actually what I'd like to do with my life. I have this desire in me to create something. I don't know what that something is at the moment, but I figure writing is a good way to release some energy. So, we'll see if anything comes from that. It would be exciting if something would, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. It just would be fun to write for a living. At least that's what I think now. If I actually did it I might have a different opinion.

Hmmm. I guess that's about it from me. I have one other thing on my mind at the moment, but that seems like something for its own separate blog entry. So, perhaps another post will be coming in the next few days. Don't count on it, but it could happen. Anyway, I'm getting sleepy, so I'm going to go relax for a bit and wait for the snow to come!!

Cold Snap and Other News

It's finally feeling like winter here in PA. Not so much in the having snow on the ground, but more in the being pretty chilly outside. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning. We've been pretty spoiled this winter so far, so I'm expecting there to be a major storm sometime before April. Talk about hedging my bets, huh? This is why I'm not going to be a forecaster.

No news on the job front yet. I haven't exactly been trying all that hard, either. I still don't know what I want to do with my life. I have decided, though, that I'm going to expand my search quite a bit. I'm no longer limiting myself to just jobs using my math or meteorology degree. I'm going to look for jobs in any field that sounds at least moderately interesting to me. Plus, I figure, a master's degree has to carry some weight no matter what job I get, right? I mean, the only place that I think it would probably overqualify me for a job is in fast food.

One other interesting item of note to report to you all. I've started a TV commentary blog on TVGuide.com similar to my other blog here on blogger. My second real post (I have three, one introduction and two actual posts) became a featured post today! I was quite surprised and happy to see that. Apparently someone thought what I wrote was worthwhile. So, feel free to go check it out either at tvguide.com or the same text in my blogger entry here.

Other than that, not much is new with me. I stayed in my apartment to work from home today. Work is being used in a very loose sense. I did do some actual work, but not as much as I would have liked. But, since I had therapy today, I felt that actually taking the bus to work and having to interrupt my flow in the middle of the day would be counter-productive. I may have been wrong, but I'm not terribly upset about it. I've been working hard all week so far, so no guilt here.

Well, for not having much new with me, that last paragraph was pretty long, so I'll stop writing for now until the mood strikes to write again.

Time to start posting again

I've seriously been neglecting this blog, so I'm hoping that in the near future I will post more regularly instead of once a month like I've been doing the past few months. I think today will be more random thoughts, since I don't have anything of any real length to make a decent post.

- First off, I finally found out this week from my advisor that he can fund me through July now. That makes me happy, for the purely practical reason that I won't have to sublet my apartment anytime in the near future. However, I'm so disappointed with what I'm doing at work that I'm not sure that spending that much more time here is going to be good for me. I don't really feel passionate about the work I'm doing, which makes it incredibly hard to actually go to campus to do it. It also doesn't help that I have no idea what kind of job I want to look for. I really don't know what I want to do, which is kind of sad, in my opinion, especially having gone through all this schooling. I mean, I'm 27 and I feel exactly like I did when I was coming out of high school. I guess my next task is just to broaden my job search to just about anything that sounds interesting for me to do. If anyone out there has any suggestions, feel free to leave comments.

- The holidays were great. I loved being at home and not having anything to really worry about. It was just nice overall. I got to spend time with my sister and my mom. The only weird thing about the holidays was that there was no snow on the ground at all when I was home. The only snow I saw was the little bit that fell from the sky as I was driving up I-43 towards home. It just didn't quite feel like Christmas in that regard, although having weather in the 40s isn't anything to complain about.

- I was very happy about what I got for Christmas, too. My sister got me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and my mom got me a bunch of sweatshirts, a pair of glittens (borrowing the word from Karen for a mitten/glove hybrid), a Pocket Dragon, and a piece of Fenton glassware. Not a lot, but much more than I expected to get. And a nice combination of useful and fun gifts. I also got a new carry-on from my grandparents. Not that I plan on flying much anymore, but having a nice piece of luggage is always good.

- Completely random thought, but still slightly on topic. I love the feel of brand new sweatshirts. I just really like how soft and fuzzy the inside of sweatshirts are before they've been washed several times over.

- On my drive back here after the holidays, I was listening to a news station through Chicago to keep track of the traffic, and there was a blurb about Pat Robertson. I seriously think this guy is delusional. Apparently God has been talking to him and He told him that there would be a major terrorist attack late this year. Am I the only one that thinks he's completely insane. Don't get me wrong, I believe in a higher power. What I don't believe is that God actually talks to all these religious zealots. Maybe it's just me, but I think Pat Robertson should just stay out of the news.

- On a related note, Bush's strategy in Iraq is finally changing! I don't know how because I didn't listen to him talk last night. I make it a point to not listen to him talk. He just irritates the hell out of me. It's about time that something gets changed there, though. I think something should have changed a couple years ago when it was clear that nothing productive was happening. But, hey, that's just my opinion.

- I have to comment on the Rosie-Donald feud going on. I feel that Miss America should have had her crown taken away after being caught underage drinking. She's supposed to be a role model for the youth of America and be working toward the greater good. At least I thought winners of pageants had platforms that spoke of things they want to accomplish that will help the world. So, I think Rosie was completely correct in calling out Donald about it. Of course, I didn't think this little fight would last for so long, nor that it would get so ugly. But still, both sides should just drop it. No good will come from it continuing, but if it must, I firmly stand on Rosie's side.

Well, I thought I had other things to say, but my mind is drawing a complete blank, so I'm going to end this post for now. As always I welcome comments, and if you do read this, feel free to stop by my other blog. That one will hopefully be updated more often as well. Leave comments there, too, if you'd like. OK, now I'll definitely stop because I'm feeling a bit shameless begging for comments here.