Happy New Year!

Well, it's the first day of the new year: 1/1/11.

I began the day by running some much-needed computer utilities.  I downloaded a firmware update for my operating system (Mac OS-X, version 10.4.11), ran an optimizing application on my hard drive, and deleted some unused files.  My Mac should be really happy now.  It's like having a clean slate to start working on this year.

The old year left without much ado (fuss, trouble, bother).  I briefly heard some fireworks going off in my neighborhood at midnight, but I was already snuggled in bed with my cat, Leo.

To all of my friends and family, I wish them prosperity and best wishes.

White Christmas

Record-breaking snowfall here on the east coast of VA today.  It's like a late Christmas present.  Last night, we started getting the white stuff and all day today it has fallen.  I went outside at lunchtime and took a yardstick for checking the accumulation in my back yard.  At that time, we had about a foot and it continues to fall.  Fortunately, the schools are closed for winter break this coming week, but the roads are going to be a mess around here for days to come.  This is very unusual for this area and I heard that we're breaking a 100-year record this year. 

I filled up my bird feeders and also put out a suet block for them to feed on.  With weather like this, I feel bad for any wildlife trying to survive outside right now.

Lord, have mercy on the poor and homeless and people who may have lost power during this storm. 

Winter Solstice

I just found out today that tomorrow night's total Lunar eclipse will also coincide with the Winter Solstice and it's the first time in 456 years.  That's kind of neat, isn't it?  I plan on going outside and viewing for a while if the sky is clear around here.  For those of us on the east coast of the US, it will take place starting at 1:33 am.  Another thing is that the moon will appear as a coppery red color instead of being totally obliterated by the shadow of the earth.  This is because, according to NASA, the only sunlight visible is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/12/17/lunar-eclipse-winter-solstice-coincide.html#ixzz18auWl1vI

 

Things like this really fascinate me.  I remember getting up in the middle of the night and going outside with my daughter to watch a meteor shower back in 2001 and being totally awestruck. 

 

Personally, I believe that we should look up to the heavens more often to get some perspective on things in our lives.  

 

Further reading about the Winter Solstice reminded me that this is the time when the Earth is tilted the farthest away from the Sun.  Actually, we are just about at the closest distance to the Sun around this time of year, but God is smart enough to shield us by having the axis slanted so we get indirect sunlight instead of the excess of solar radiation.

 

 

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE! 

 

First Snow

Last night, we got a spattering of snow here in Southeast VA.  I was coming out of the grocery store at about 7:00 pm and it was really coming down.  Later, as I got ready for bed, I looked out and the cars parked in the street were lightly covered and I could hear the sound of sleet falling.  We owe this unusual, early winter blast to the La Niña effect in the Pacific Ocean, so I've heard.  This is more like January weather for around here, not the first week of December.  Having grown up around here, I can count on one hand the number of white Christmases that I have seen in my lifetime.  I believe that the number is two and that may be being generous.  I can remember my wish when I was blowing out my birthday cake candles year after year was for snow at Christmastime.

While it may put me in more of a 'Christmassy' mood to be all bundled up, needing gloves and scarves outside, extra blankets on my bed and craving a mug of hot chocolate, I still don't look forward to the higher electric bills during the winter.

Today, I am getting my Christmas tree and house all decorated for the season and listening to appropriate music on the radio.  Wish you all were here to enjoy it all. 

Gone Too Soon

Just like the month of November, my seasonal job ends tonight.  It was a bittersweet time with goodbyes and also a certain amount of relief because this has been coming for weeks now.  The not-knowing who would be next has gotten really old.  We got to leave early and a couple of us went out together to get something to eat for supper on the way home. 
There's still going to a Christmas bonus that will go out next week and we'll reconvene for a banquet on the 16th of December.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas and, maybe tomorrow, I'll start working on getting my house decorated for the holidays.

Higher Consumer Prices

When I went to the grocery store on Saturday, Nov 13th, I was surprised to find that my food cost has gone up significantly.  I don't know if it will be news to you or not, but it was certainly an eye-opener to me.  So, I sat down with some saved receipts and a calculator and here's what I found:

Purina Indoor Cat Formula cat food (3.5 lb bag)  $4.99 now, was $3.49 in September
Granulated Cane Sugar (5 lb bag)  $3.19, was $2.54 in Sept.
Sunchips brand multi-grain chips* $3.79, was $3.49
Mrs. Smith's frozen pie* $4.99, was $3.98
Baked Ruffles brand chips $3.99, was $3.38
Tombstone brand frozen pizza* $4.49, was $3.58
Crest Total Care brand toothpaste $4.19, was $3.73
Spaghetti sauce (store brand) $1.79, was $1.59
(*) didn't actually buy, but made note of the price.

While some prices only went up by twenty cents or so, others jumped over a dollar making my total bill about $5 more than it was a couple of months ago.  By my estimate, this increase is 10-11%.

When citizens in the US are going without pay raises or cost of living adjustments, having their health insurance rates increase by as much as 12% this month, lay-offs still happening, gasoline prices increasing, etc... having to shell out even more to buy food leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Funny Words

I was reading some news articles this morning and came upon a phrase in an article about a recent copyright infringement that made me laugh. 
Here it is: "I have to say my flabber has never been so gasted." by blogger Sally

The word, of course, is Flabbergast and I had to find out more about it.

It turns up first in print in 1772, in an article on new words in the Annual Register.  Presumably some unsung genius had put together flabber and aghast to make one word...  The source of the first part is obscure.  It might be linked to flabby, suggesting that somebody is so astonished that they shake like a jelly.  It can’t be connected with flapper, in the sense of a person who fusses or panics, as some have suggested, as that sense only emerged at the end of the nineteenth century.  But flabbergasted could have been an existing dialect word, as one early nineteenth-century writer claimed to have found it in Suffolk dialect and another — in the form flabrigast — in Perthshire.  Further than this, nobody can go with any certainty.
*excerpted from World Wide Words.org, Michael Quinion

Flabbergastation
Flab`ber*gas*ta"tion\, n. The state of being flabbergasted.

Flabbergast

–verb (used with object) to overcome with surprise and bewilderment; astound; amaze.

Related Words: dumbfounded, dumfounded, stupefied, thunderstruck

 

Come to think of it, earlier this week I was flabbergasted by something that happened to me at work involving a co-worker.  The story goes that when I began working a seasonal job six weeks ago, I struck up a friendship with someone that I am working with.  We sat at work stations next to one another and had a lot of similar interests to chat about about each night.  Let me also say that this job is at a company that is dominated by female employees.  In my department of 60-70 workers, there are only six men -- at most.

 

I thought of this as a friendship and listened to lots of pet stories and similar tales of being laid off from a career job in the recent past.  There never seemed to be a lack of topics that we couldn't discuss. Things seemed to be very cordial until just s few nights ago when I was called into my supervisor's office for a sit down visit.  Suddenly, this person [whom will remain anonymous] had gone and told our superiors that she was uncomfortable sitting next to me and that she wanted to be moved across the room to another workstation and that I was stalking her, of all things.  To anyone who knows me, this is not something that I would do.

 

With my jaw on the floor in what felt like a "deer in the headlights" moment, I told my side side of the story and vowed to have no further contact with this person.  There was to be no further disciplinary action necessary, but it was recommended that I cut off all ties.

 

Believe me, the message is received -- loud and clear.

 

Evidently, this co-worker has some personality disorder: bipolar, paranoia, I don't know what.

After the initial shock of being 'thrown under the bus' by this person, I have moved on and am more the wiser of the "crazies" that we come into contact with in our daily lives.  

 

Be warned!  That person sitting next to you could be a complete lunatic. 

 

 

 

Election Eve

It's not only Halloween tonight, but it's the eve of some very important mid-term elections in this country.  I'll wager that Nancy Pelosi rode her broomstick all the way back to California to try and scare up some votes for Tuesday.  (Not bad, huh?)
Also, we have such a divisive man sitting in the Oval Office and he now tells the Whites and Conservatives that we can 'sit in the backseat'.  Basically, he's putting us at the 'back of the bus' as it were, but maybe it's better than being thrown 'under the bus' like he seems to do to most everyone else.

It's not too much to ask that our elected officials represent the people that elected them instead of the almighty dollar and the lobbyists that buy them off.  I pray that this coming Tuesday some order will be restored to the US. 

God have mercy on us. 

Voters called 'Stupid' by POTUS

From the UK Telegraph 10/25/2010  Toby Harnden

Barack Obama sounds like a snooty anti-American Eurocrat when he calls US voters stupid 

My “American Way” column this week is about closing argument of President Barack Obama and his Democratic party that their opponents, and anyone thinking of voting for them, are stupid. Quite apart from making them sound sound like members of the anti-American elites of Europe, this seems to me to be a rather, er, stupid, strategy for Democrats.
Here’s the column:

So what is the closing argument of Barack Obama’s Democrats before next Tuesday’s midterm elections? The President is no longer the self-proclaimed “hope-monger” of 2008, who vaingloriously declared that his vanquishing Hillary Clinton marked “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”.
He has stopped patting voters on the back for choosing, by voting for him, to listen not to their doubts or fears but to their “greatest hopes and highest aspirations”. Instead, he is berating Americans (most of whom now do not believe he deserves a second term) for not being able to “think clearly” because they’re “scared”.

Having failed to change Washington or, as he promised that night in St Paul, Minnesota in June 2008, to provide "good jobs to the jobless" (unemployment was 7.7 per cent when he took office and is 9.6 per cent now), Obama is changing tack.
Boiled down, the new Obama message to Americans is: you're too stupid to overcome your fears. To be fair, it's not entirely new. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was caught on tape at a San Francisco fund-raiser saying it was not surprising that voters facing economic hardship "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them".
At a fund-raiser in Massachusetts this month, Obama spoke of Democrats having "facts and science and argument" on their side. As opposed, presumably, to the lies, superstition and prejudice that Republicans rely on.
This year, Democrats have embraced with gusto the notion that Republicans, and by extension anyone thinking of voting for them, are dimwits. Their mirth over the likes of Tea Party figures like Christine O'Donnell, who said once she had "dabbled" in witchcraft and is now a no-hoper Senate candidate in Delaware, seems to know no bounds.
The most chortling of all about the populist Tea Party and its anti-tax, anti-government uprising against the Republican establishment can be found on the shows of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the edgy liberal satirists on Comedy Central. Mocking Republican candidates last week, Stewart declared the midterm elections as "the best chance ever for a bowl of fresh fruit" to be elected.
Three days before the elections, Stewart will hold a "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington on the same day as Colbert, who adopts the character of a Right-wing talk show host, leads a "March to Keep Fear Alive". The thinly-disguised message: Republicans are crazies who trade on fear.
In choosing California and Massachusetts, two of the most liberal states in the union, to demean ordinary Americans during election campaigns, Obama did not display a whole lot of his much-vaunted intelligence. But Obama's decision to plug Stewart's rally approvingly and appear on his show three days beforehand is even more foolish.
In the 1990s, Democrats managed to get away from their image as "eggheads" in the 1950s or "pointy-headed liberals" in the 1970s. Bill Clinton spoke like a Good Ol' Boy from the Deep South, ate junk food and enjoyed trashy women. He was clever, but he did not look down on people.
Obama, by contrast, has become a parody of the Ivy League liberal smugly content with his own intellectual superiority and pitying the poor idiots who disagree with him. It is an approach that shares much with the default anti-Americanism of British and European elites, who love to mock the United States as a country full of gun-toting, bible-clutching morons.
David Cameron has made nods to this sniffy condescension, speaking of the Sarah Palin phenomenon as being "hard for us to understand" (how about giving it a go, Dave?) and describing American conservatism, inaccurately, as moving in a "very culture war direction". This might be part of the reason why he seems to have hit it off with Obama.
The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that belittling the Tea Party movement, which is taking hold of much of Middle America, merely fuels the popular sense that the party in power is out of touch. It also highlights the reluctance of Obama and the Democrats to discuss the Wall Street bail-out, economic stimulus and health care bills because they know they are not vote winners.
Joining the Europeans in mocking ordinary Americans for their supposed idiocy may play well at big-dollar fund-raisers. In adopting this as a political strategy, however, the Democrats could be the ones who end up looking stupid.

 

A President for 'His People' not 'We the People'

** I am passing this along from fellow blogger Thesec on EP and I agree with most of it. **

In the year 2008, 232 years after our Founding Fathers declared their independence from the British crown, Barack Hussein Obama, a politician far to the left of mainstream America, was elected as President of the United States.  Because of their minority numerical status, it was not black people who elected Obama, but whites who were fed up with the Bush years. While I did not vote for Obama – and disagreed strongly with his political ideology – I was nevertheless proud that America could elect a black president and overcome centuries of racial prejudice. In fact, I joked with friends that the Germans, French and other Western Europeans were also initially elated with the choice, since "they were just happy that they did not now have a black head of state." Europe could have never elected a black man, given its much deeper ingrained prejudice against the race. So with Obama's ascendancy to the throne, we American whites felt good about ourselves, if nothing else.

But in the last two years, this pride has turned to deep-seated resentment and horror – as we have witnessed Obama seemingly favoring his own race and true religious allegiance over whites, Christians and Jews. On the eve of the congressional elections of 2010, when most polls are predicting that Obama's Democrats will lose control of at least the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly the Senate, it has become increasingly clear to not only tea partiers, but also most of the white Judeo-Christian electorate, that President Obama is not a ruler for all of the people, but rather "his people."

And, how did we arrive at this sad and frightening conclusion?
First, there were the trillion-dollar bailouts, much of which were earmarked for black minority contractors. These bailouts were not only economically stupid, but the money was dolled out in a discriminatory way.

Second, there was Obamacare, an unpopular piece of legislation to say the least, designed to provide health insurance mostly for the president's black constituency. Obamacare was enacted over the will of the majority of Americans.

Third, President Obama publicly sided with a black Boston college professor who had claimed that he was harassed by a white police officer. Without any evidence, Obama stuck his foot into the controversy and stepped in "it," when it was revealed that the white officer had done nothing wrong. And, regardless of who was right, it was not the president's role to get involved in the first place.

Fourth, the Obama Justice Department, lead by black Attorney General Eric Holder, refused to prosecute Black Panthers who illegally disrupted an election polling place in Philadelphia. To tell you who the Black Panthers are, they recently attended a private meeting with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the neo-Nazi Jew and Christian hater of the Islamic Republic of Iran, during Ahmadinejad's visit to New York City for the annual General Assembly meeting of the United Nations. The Black Panthers are of the same ilk as Iran's radical Islamic president – that is, they are anti-white, anti-Semitic Jew and Christian haters. Indeed, the infamous Jew hater, so called Rev. Louis Farrakhan, was also, not coincidentally, present at this meeting with Ahmadinejad.

Fifth, Obama's kinship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Farrakhan and other black Muslim leaders, whom he has never denounced for their anti-white, anti-Judeo-Christian and anti-American ideologies, has not gone unnoticed by the general electorate. Indeed, in case of Rev. Wright, Obama had been his long-time "parishioner" and supporter. These associations by Obama emit a stench hard for most Americans not to smell.

Sixth, Obama canceled the White House commemoration of the National Day of Prayer, but instead hosted a White House feast for the Muslim Holy Day of Ramadan. To make matters worse, the president then endorsed the building of a mosque at Ground Zero, despite its opposition by nearly 80 percent of the American people and even 58 percent of all American Muslims. This one act, above all, sent a message that Obama not only favors his own race, but "his" religion, which Americans have increasingly come to believe is Muslim. Coupled with his belligerent and harmful attitude and approach toward Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama has reinforced the belief among American Jews in particular that he is an anti-Semite along the lines of his black Muslim friends, only more subtle and slick in his approach.

Suffice it to say that the majority of white Christians and Jews no longer see Obama as the president of "We the People" but instead "his" people. And, while the Republican Party may rejoice at this given its prospects in the upcoming congressional elections, there is no reason to be pleased for the country. For President Obama has not united the races and religions, but instead divided and pitted them against each other. The level of hostility one sees "in the streets," with a reverse backlash against blacks and Muslims, is frightening and potentially explosive.

When the leader of the United States ceases to be the ruler of all the people, but only a select few, the nation stands even more – particularly during a severe continuing economic depression – on the precipice of chaos, rebellion and ultimately revolution.

President Obama, even though you – given your dismal record of governance – may be our president for only another two and one half years, I implore you, as a white Christian and Jew, to be the leader of all of us.

We were proud that the nation had put aside its historic racial divide to have elected a black man even if many, like me, did not vote for you. But if, Mr. President, you do not reverse course, ironically you will have set back "your people" decades in its just cause for racial and religious understanding and equality.

Sign of the Times?

My seasonal job - which I began working six weeks ago - is starting to wind down, unexpectedly.  This is work with a national company that has (4) locations in the US and (1) in Canada and the last two weeks of October have been [traditionally] the busiest of the year for them.  Well, two weeks ago, we stopped getting any overtime and now they are beginning to furlough workers in different departments as the work dries up.  The people that I have asked, people that have been working there for many years, tell me that they've never seen things like this -- sales orders drop off dramatically after only one busy month.

Evidently, the US economy has not recovered enough for families to have any extra money to be able to buy the school portraits for their children this fall.  That's the business that I am working in.

*************************************************************************************

On another note, our local school system can't seem to get any dependable bus drivers.  I had to drive my son to school this morning and have had to many mornings so that he wouldn't be an hour late getting there.  They have had one substitute driver after another and the kids never know when or if a bus is going to show up.  Well, after a heated discussion this morning at the school and with the transportation office, I was assured that they will have the problem taken care of by tomorrow.  
I'll believe it when I see it.      

Full Moon Friday

I meant to write this last night, but I was just too tired to stay up. 

When I was coming home from work late last night, the moon was so bright that there were shadows everywhere almost like daytime.  It was a sight to behold.  It made me think about a news story that I heard this week that a NASA mission last year which crashed a probe on the dark side of the moon had resulted in the discovery of water on the moon.  I have heard that fresh drinking water will someday be a very precious commodity for us as populations increase.  I wonder if we could someday mine water from the moon or would it be the potential for disaster if we somehow decreased the moon's mass and changed our own gravitational attraction?  It's something to think about.

   

Not much left to say?

Say it isn't so....
When I first started writing here a couple of months ago, I was all fired up with things I wanted to say.  Now, it seems that I'm not expressing myself the way I was hoping.  I ask myself: Do I want this space to just be the repository of all the minutiae of the previous day?

I love to gather facts and trivia each day and I don't know what I'd do without the internet and high speed connection.  I like to read news sources from all over to get a balanced approach to what's going on in the world around me.  Earlier today, I heard some facts and I recall that, historically, it took the U.S. all the time from 1776 until approximately 1990 to reach $3 Trillion in debt.  However, in less than two years, the country has borrowed another $3 Trillion.

Here is an illustration of what One Trillion looks like.  (Note the man in the bottom left.  Those pallets are double-stacked to about six feet in height.)

 
 That's a lot of money!

Full of Promise

Today, as I sit here writing, I'm reminded how nice a day it is outside by all of the delicious sunlight streaming in and I consider all of the things that I might try to get accomplished today before the sun sets.  I don't know about you, but I am motivated to be productive while there is daylight and [once it gets dark] I seem to lose that motivation.

Last night at work, we got the official announcement that we'd done such a good job all week that we didn't have to go in to work today.  I'll miss the extra $75 overtime pay for six hours, but the extra day to get some things done that need to be done is very welcomed.  This afternoon, I will be taking my car in for routine service that I've been putting off.  Also, I really need to get out and cut the grass for one last time for this season and then I can put away the mower in the garage until spring.

***********************************************************************************

I have a problem with clutter.  I look at the boxes stacked in the corner of my bedroom and I don't like the way it looks.  I am trying to live with less stuff, but over the years, you end up with things that you just don't want to throw away.  It would really help if I had a linen closet, but I don't.  I have gotten a few Rubbermaid totes that I am putting all of my linens in and stacking.  I have designated different colors for different things: green = towels, blue = sheets and pillowcases, orange = seasonal things, etc....
I guess I need to be more disciplined to deal with little loose things before they get piled into a mess.
Like I was saying to my son this week: it's easier to deal with several small tasks than trying to tackle a mountain of a task that you know is going to defeat you.  I need to put that into action - starting today.

Out of Gas

Last night, as I was driving home (or should I say this morning) at 2:00 am, my gas gauge was on Empty the whole trip for about 24 miles.  There was a Racetrack gas station open that I drove by just three miles from home, but I was too tired to stop and I just prayed that my car would have enough fuel to get me all the way.  Prayer answered.  This afternoon, I went to fill up and it cost me over $40 for a full tank of regular.  The prices in my area have increased over 12 cents per gallon in the last week to an average of around $2.62 /gal.  As I look back in Quicken at my monthly expenses, it's been two years since gas prices were this high.

Well rested and full, I'm now getting ready to go back to work. 

What's in a Date?

I just realized that today's date is: 10.10.10.  Pretty weird, right? 
"The 10th day of the 10th month of the 10th year of the millennium.   And 10 is no ordinary number. In ancient Greece, the Pythagoreans valued 10 as a symbol of knowledge and of the universe. And it’s still important today: The first thing our parents did when we emerged into the world was count our fingers and toes, seeking sets of 10.   Later, we learned to rate the finer things in life on a scale of – what else? – 1 to 10".*

Here are some other notable 10s to ponder:

1)  10 amendments to the Bill of Rights
2)  A Basketball hoop is 10 feet above the floor with ten players.
3)  God unleashed 10 plagues on the Egyptians in Old Testament history.
4)  The 10 Commandments
5)  The weather this weekend was a perfect 10.
6)  Number 10 Downing Street -- home to the British Prime Minister
7)  Ten is one of the perfect numbers (1+2+3+4), and signifies the perfection of Divine Order.
8)  Counting from one to ten before speaking is often done in order to cool one's temper.
9)  The traditional Eye chart uses 10 different letters.
10) The number of Canadian provinces

* Pilotonline

Also, oddly enough, my car's odometer reading was 101010 recently and I made a comment to my friends when I got to work that I was feeling very binary. 

Didn't have to work

Yesterday, when I went to work, we were told that we'd done such a good job at putting out the work for the week, that we didn't need to come in on Saturday (today).  I have a long list of things to try and get accomplished with the prospect of a "free" day. 

1)   Sleep until I feel like getting up.  Done.
2)   Go to bank and deposit paycheck.  Done.
3)   Take clothes and unused items to Goodwill.  Working on it.
4)   Wash car and vacuum interior.
5)   Cut grass, maybe for the last time of the season.
6)   Wash laundry
7)   Check out movie listings and possibly go to see one tonight.
8)   Hang towel rack in bathroom
9)   Put away clean laundry
10) Clean bathroom

The weather has been so glorious for a couple of days that it feels like a nice reward for all of the yucky, steamy days of summer we had and all of the rain that we got recently.  The cooler nights are a welcomed relief and I like opening up my windows and getting a nice breeze.  We can hear church bells ringing on the hour from nearby and it seems like all is right in the world.  

Been a long time

Well, it's been a long time since I had a few minutes to sit down and write something. . .

It has gotten kind of chilly this first week of October and I wasn't willing to be turning on my heat so soon.  I always look forward to this time of the year for some savings on cooling and heating costs for a month or so when as seasons change.  It's also nice to be able to sleep with a window open to get a cool breeze.  But, a couple of nights ago, I relented and turned up the thermostat to 68 degrees because it was 65 inside.  I think that it's strange that we (humans) feel comfortable in a cooler environment when it's really hot outside, but when it's cool outside, we want to be warmer. 
Somewhere, I heard that humans are most happy temperature-wise to be at or around 72 degrees Fahrenheit and I agree.

In other news, the seasonal job is going well with lots of overtime each week.  Today's paycheck is going to be really nice.  Having to sit for extended periods is still bothering me, but I've ordered a gel seat cushion from Amazon.com that I believe will help with that.  More and more new workers keep arriving each week and we're still entering the busiest time of the season.  I have to get to work in plenty of time to secure a good chair and there is a lot of switching all around from shift to shift. 

Time to jump in the shower so I can be on schedule for getting to work on time.

      

Too Tired

Well, a week ago, I began working as a seasonal employee.  We're told that it may last until Christmas, but more than likely, we'll be done by around Thanksgiving.  I am having some trouble adjusting to the different hours -- 4:15 pm to 12:45 am, and now (tonight) adding an extra hour ('til 1:45am) to keep from being behind schedule.  (Saturdays, 12:15-6:15 pm.)  I am not all that happy with being just One of the "collective" at work...  We all go on our breaks together, all come back and work diligently, we all go to lunch break as a group and leave as a group.  There is really not much of any place for any independent actions.  We have our task and we're all working to meet the goals that have been set for us.

I keep telling myself that I am doing this for the money and it's just temporary.  Having to live off of my savings for most of this year and having no income, I need to be replenishing my bank account rather than depleting it. 

Finding enough time to get enough sleep is still a challenge for me.

Disappointment

Today, I had an interview at 9:00 am and I managed to get there on time after only 4-5 hours of sleep.  Well, when I arrived, I was told that they had changed their mind and weren't hiring anyone -- they were going to use the personnel that they already had instead of adding a new employee.  Imagine my disappointment when I heard this.  For a week, I have been hoping that this job would be the one for me.

Well, I need to go back to bed so I can get a nap before going to a seasonal job this afternoon.

I'm feeling very dejected and depressed.