Earlier today I finished Ariel's first book, Offbeat Bride (have YOU bought your autographed copy yet?), and sometime over the next couple of days I'll write a review of it for Amazon. I haven't written an Amazon review in a while, and it's always a nice challenge for me because I always limit my reviews to 300 words or less. For a long-winded academic like myself, that's always difficult.
Needless to say I'll give Ariel's book a full five stars, not just because I admire her and her work but because it's a damn fine book. One thing I have to remark on here, though, is that for some reason, even though the book was quite engrossing, I couldn't read it for more than a few minutes at a time. I'm thinking that this may actually be one of those weird subconscious things where I only read it for that long because I'm so used to only reading Ariel that long, what with the way blogs work and all. This kind of leads me to wonder if blogging might actually be leading further to the shortening of the average American's attention span, to the point where we can only read in short bursts, just like with television shows.
I'm still trying to figure out what I hate the most about being called up for jury duty in a few weeks here.
The potential for schedule disruption is kind of high up on my list right now. Ignoring that I don't tend to be a morning person in the first place, even though going down to the courthouse right now wouldn't pose a problem, I'm dreading the possibility that some time soon I'll finally get a reply from one of the places I've applied to work at, and won't you know it they'll need to schedule me for an interview right when I'm supposed to be tied up with jury stuff. I know that this is kind of irrational because I should be able to reschedule interviews around this, but I'm starting to feel kind of desperate about this whole job thing what with the lack of replies to my inquiries and all.
Also, downtown Toledo is just generally someplace I'm not comfortable being in the first place, and driving in downtown is more often than not a nerve-wracking experience for me. Making matters worse is that I'll be going down there in this winter, which also adds the potential for slip-and-slide stuff. (We finally got our first real snowfall of the season today, just to remind me of what's possible here.) Oh, and the parking lots downtown are so expensive that I'll probably end up losing money on this whole deal, considering the pittance that jurors are paid here.
Finally, there's also the whole thing about me being a transsexual and all. Even though it's been illegal to discriminate in housing or employment for transgender people in Toledo for the past decade or so, I don't believe that those rights apply to when I go into a courtroom. Depending on the judge I get, it's entirely possible that my appearance, mannerisms, voice, etc. might wind up leading me to a contempt of court charge. I've already tried googling for information on the legal issues surrounding being transgender in a court of law when you're not the defendant, and I haven't had much luck. Given my present lack of employment, I'm also not in a position to be calling up any lawyers and looking for advice there.
All things being equal, I am really not looking forward to this, since in addition to the general hassle of it all I'm also worried about all the things that could potentially go wrong here. For lack of a better phrase, this sucks.
Dear universe:
While it is true that while I was out grocery shopping Thursday night I said to myself that I wish I had more opportunities to go out, what I meant was that I was hoping I would make arcade trips soon, or that the weather would be nice enough to go on a photography excursion, or that, you know, I'd get a job here sometime in the near future. Something along those lines.
I did NOT want to get called up for jury duty.
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
After the warm snap here in Toledo finally broke a couple of weeks ago, we've been getting snow on a fairly regular basis. The strange thing is that these snows are always just dustings, though, and it takes quite a few of them to get us to the point where there's any serious snow on the ground. Today we got up to 37 degrees, and that just melted everything away. Not that dustings are unusual up here, but usually we'd at least have one two-inch snowfall here or so as a "base," and the fact that we haven't had a serious snowfall yet is kind of strange. This pattern is even supposed to continue at least for the next ten days, too, if not longer.
The cold weather finally caught up with me personally when I went out to do some grocery shopping last night, only to find that the Camry's battery had lost its charge. I've been staying home as much as possible lately, trying to avoid spending money whenever I can, and as a result the Camry's not getting the exercise it should. I'm just glad that this happened when I had one of the folks' minivans to drive as a backup; this could have happened when I didn't have a backup, and with something really important, like a job interview, hanging in the balance.
Speaking of job interviews, I still don't have any coming up here. Don't even ask what this is doing to me inside.
Whoever thought that putting those moving cameras on the top of the glass for the NHL All-Star festivities was a good idea was mistaken. All the shots they've shown from the camera so far (at least on CBC) have shown less of the play going on than the traditional sideline camera, and the new camera looks huge when it's scrolling by on the traditional camera, creating a real distraction when trying to watch the play. I can understand the NHL wanting to find new camera angles to jazz up the television presentation, but I'm surprised that this one actually made it to a live broadcast.
Anyway, I wish I had more to say here, but so much of my life seems to be on hold right now as I wait to hear back on all those job applications I've sent out. I have been reading Ariel's new book, and I'll have more to say about it once I finish it. Other than that, there's really not too much else to report on. I just hope I have something to report to you all on the job front soon.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I can't even say that I haven't had time to write here lately, because I have.
In fact, that's the problem, because for all the job stuff I've put out there, I'm not getting any responses yet. I know that this is a slow process, and I know that English isn't exactly a field where everyone knocks down your door the moment you get a graduate degree and begs you to come do marvellous things with them, but still and all, this has been something of a torturous process for me in recent days.
I think it's about time I get to putting up Google ads on the .org. I'm sorry to have to do that, but with my college loans starting to come due in a few months, I'm going to need every penny I can get.
Anyone else feeling dirty because they're about to watch The O'Reilly Factor just to catch Stephen Colbert's appearance? At least I can catch the replay of Countdown at midnight ...
I wish I could say that the job hunt is going better, but I'm still kind of stuck here. I've found all kinds of positions to apply for here, but I'm still not hearing back from the places I have applied to. I'm just now beginning to understand how hard of a process this really is, and I have to say that the stress is starting to build here.
In order to relieve that, and in order to make sure I don't go totally insane here, I'm going to be working on some writing projects here that I haven't had time to work on since graduate school just threw me for a loop. If nothing else, I've got some opportunities on the writing front that I should pursue here while I have some real time to devote to them. I'll try to report on those as they come closer to completion.
Back in my younger days I can remember getting the second Joe Montana football game for the Sega Genesis around the time that it first came out. (For some reason they were less expensive than the John Madden games that were coming out, at least around Toledo.) Joe Montana II is perhaps most notable for being the first console football game to have vocal commentary throughout the games; although the commentary was primitive due to the technological restrictions of the time, I still felt like it added a lot to the playing experience.
Fast forward some fifteen years or so, and of course commentary is close to a standard feature on pretty much every sports game that comes out. This past weekend, probably because of Hockey Day in Canada on CBC, I got out my copy of NHL 2k6 for the PS2, which I picked up almost as soon as it came out simply because the in-game commentary was being done by the CBC's primary play-by-play and colour commentators for Hockey Night in Canada, Bob Cole and Harry Neale. (I still wonder why 2k Sports doesn't just go all the way and secure the rights to all the Hockey Night in Canada regulars, especially Don Cherry.)
In addition to a general buginess that seems to plague NHL 2k6, though, the game bothers me because it doesn't seem to know how to do Bob and Harry's dialogue right. The last time I played a game, Bob Cole told me about five different players who had a plus-minus of zero before the first goal was scored. Of course no one's going to have a plus-minus other than zero at that point. In the pre-game warmups I've had Harry Neale tell me that the Red Wings were a young team and a veteran team, making me wonder if the game even bothers to look up the average age of the players before deciding which sound file to spit out. Play-by-play often doesn't line up with what's happening on the ice, and a good part of the time Bob and Harry are saying things that they'd never say during an actual NHL broadcast, to the point where the game might as well just flash on the screen, "THEY'RE READING FROM SCRIPTS NOW."
What gets me is that I could probably do a good job of figuring out ways to make the in-game commentary sound a lot more like what you'd hear from an actual Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. I don't have a lot of training in computer programming (at least not enough to get a job at a company like 2k Sports), but I do know enough about simple concepts like logic loops that I could probably flowchart out the routines enough so that an experienced programmer could translate them into whatever machine language 2k Sports uses to make its titles. Likewise, I can't quite claim to be the most devoted Hockey Night in Canada viewer in the world, but as someone who works with words for a living, I think I possess a special skill set that would enable me to help make the commentary track more natural, useful, and realistic.
Perhaps I'm just putting so much thought into this because I'm still waiting to hear back on the jobs I've applied for here, but I seriously think that if there isn't already a position for this kind of job at 2k Sports, there should be, and I should be considered for such a job. It would certainly strengthen the NHL 2k lineup tremendously, although not quite as much as having a Coach's Corner during the first intermission of all the games would.
Over the weekend Toledo finally dropped down to winter-like temperatures anymore. I was fully expecting to get snow in here again given how much rain we had in the forecast, but instead we wound up getting freezing rain all last night, and it looks like we'll have more coming in this coming night.
While the roads have been okay to drive on since they were still warm from the recent weather, we've had significant ice accumulations on the power lines around here. So far we haven't had any lines snap or any power outages, but given that we're going to have more freezing rain into the night tonight, it is kind of a big concern for me at this point. I can't recall Toledo ever getting this kind of freezing rain accumulation before, but from catching news stories on other parts of the US and Canada having weather like this, it sounds like these kinds of things take a very long time for the power companies to fix. Given that my parents don't keep an office separate from the house any longer, losing power for a long period of time could be catastrophic for us.
I would have gone out and taken pictures earlier today of the ice on the trees and stuff, but between the fairly low levels of ice on everything but the power lines, and the fact that it was dark and cloudy all day (which didn't help to melt things around here), conditions were not exactly what could be called picturesque. Even though I hate walking and driving in snow, a part of me is kind of hoping that we do get some snow here soon, just so I'll have an excuse to go out and do some photography.
I suppose it isn't to be expected that one of the things I'll probably miss most about Toledo, if I end up moving to get a job here, is getting CBC on my local cable system. Ignoring my strange fascination with curling, the great Canadian comedies (everything you've heard about Little Mosque on the Prairie is true), and their interesting take on world news, of course I am deeply in love with Hockey Night in Canada and in particular the rants of one Don Cherry. It's even getting to the point where if there's a Red Wings game running opposite Hockey Night in Canada, I'll skip the Wings game to keep my dial tuned to CBC.
Today was CBC's annual Hockey Day in Canada coverage, where in addition to running a tripleheader featuring the six Canadian teams, they've run specials on local hockey all throughout the day, resulting in what will be, in a little while here, thirteen and a half hours of near-nonstop hockey coverage. I'm not going to apologize for setting nearly everything else in my day aside to watch it, particularly when I may not get this opportunity again.
I know I may get in trouble for making this kind of observation given that I've never even been to Canada, but one thing I've always admired about Canada and hockey is how Canadians just love the game, and they don't need a multi-billion dollar sports league breathing down their neck every second to make the game the country's game. Contrast that to how pervasive the NFL is here in the States, and how the NFL tries to control the game. Okay, I'll grant you that the NHL's management is too incompetent to pull something like that off in Canada even if they wanted to, but they don't have to because Canadians still have enough of a sense of community that they pull together with hockey on their own.
First of all, thanks to everyone who's been leaving comments here helping me regarding the job market. Your advice has been most appreciated.
Given that a couple of online buddies of mine (can't really say that I can call them friends since we don't converse that much) are about to release new books, I figured I should give them a little free advertising here, especially since I'm about to beg both of them to help me with the whole "finding day jobs for writers" thing.
First, Bonnie Burton is about to release her second book, You Can Draw Star Wars. If you've been following Bonnie's LiveJournal then you've been keeping up with all the tremendous columns she's been writing at starwars.com including some basic art tutorials, and I'm sure this how-to guide will not only be a breeze to use, but also contain an abundance of Bonnie's trademark wit.
Second, Ariel Meadow Stallings just released her first book, Offbeat Bride: Tafetta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides, a combination memoir of her marriage to her longtime beau Andreas and a guide for people who want to have marriages that go well against the grain of what's considered traditional here in Western culture. You could buy a copy from Amazon or your local bookseller, but if you're really cool like me then you'll buy an autographed copy directly from the author herself. (Seriously, Ariel just got laid off from her day job, and the autographed copies make her more money, so try to buy an autographed copy if you can.)
Quick question about applying for jobs online for those of you who've done it before:
When a company's employment listing says that you should e-mail a copy of your résumé to a given e-mail address, should you include a cover letter as a separate attachment, or type the cover letter in the body of the e-mail, or just not include any kind of cover letter, or what?
It was a case of Murphy's Law revisited today, as I went over to UT to take care of things over there (at least the emergency stuff) today, and sure enough finally it starts snowing. The roads weren't too bad, but I still hate how the roads start getting dangerous the moment I leave the house.
I'm starting to get a few nibbles in terms of the job stuff now, but no real bites. I keep getting the feeling that I should be pushing on this harder than I have been, but honestly this is all a bit much to take in. As with so many other things in life, I'm having to learn things here much later in life than most people learn them. I just hope that soon I'll be able to get that job and get on my way in life.
It looks like, at the very least, I'll be able to avert the worst-case scenario over this whole UT thing with a visit there tomorrow afternoon. There's still an underlying problem that I'll need to take care of, but at the very least I'm finally able to disengage my panic mode over this whole sordid episode because the worst of what could have happened isn't going to happen here.
I have to say, it was odd today realizing that UT was starting a new semester, and for the first time in five and a half years I'm not a student there. I was hoping that I would have a new place to call my home as a teacher right now, but I don't, and I'm going to have to shift my focus in terms of the whole job thing right now. I just hope I'm able to find a good job here soon.
My apologies for not updating further on the situation with UT that I mentioned last time, but right now I think it's for the best if I mention as little as possible here for fear of screwing things up. I don't want to make any promises about how this will get resolved, but I'm hoping that I can go to campus on Monday (on my own dime since I don't have a valid parking pass on campus any longer) and get everything resolved.
I can't say that this is serious enough that I should be asking for everyone's hopes and/or wishes, but it is still kind of serious, and I just hope that this doesn't take forever to get resolved, because I only have a very small window of time to resolve this. After that, I will more than likely be in some serious doo-doo that I'll never be able to recover from.
Funny thing. Well, not so much "funny" as "making me want to pull all my hair out," but you know what I mean.
See, I was all prepared to come to write here this evening about me getting a huge lesson in Murphy's Law and keeping my mouth shut. After making that post last night about how my television was now over ten years old and the picture was starting to get blurry, and how I really didn't have the money to get a good replacement for it, last night my television up and died on me. I just came back from Best Buy where I had to get a discounted floor model to replace my old television, and while I can't say that I didn't have the money for a bargain basement television, I'm still kind of loathe to spend much money on anything until I get my job situation finalized here.
That would have been enough to have made the past twenty-four hours or so a real pain in the neck to deal with. Then, however, I got a letter from UT in the mail late this afternoon. Remember that paperwork snafu I mentioned last semester? It may have just come back to bite me in the ass here. I can't be sure because I need to wait for a phone call from the university tomorrow, but needless to say I may about to learn the true meaning of the word "screwed" here.
Here's hoping that this all gets straightened out and I get a good, decent-paying job here soon, because things are looking pretty bleak for me at this point.
Earlier tonight I watched Steve Yzerman's 19 get raised to the top of the Joe. When did Bob Probert get out of jail? Seriously, seeing Vladimir Konstantinov to this day still makes me cry. There's still a small little piece of me that hopes that one of these days Vlady will be well enough to at least do one shift in an old-timers game, even though I know it's not that likely to happen.
On the subject of televisions, the television I have up here in my room is over ten years old now, and it's starting to show its age. Even the bargain basement TV I bought for my DDR setup in the garage a couple of years ago has a crisper picture at this point. The thing is, not only am I not that willing to drop money on a television while I'm still waiting to hear back on teaching jobs, but given what I've been hearing about this latest generation of televisions, it sounds like the models that are in the stores right now are really skimping on the quality. If I were to buy a television right now, I'd probably get another CRT just to tide me by until better stuff came out on the market.
Also, as much as I've been trying to resist getting one, I really think I need a PVR here soon. It's not that I watch much that much television (though I have been watching more TV lately -- more on that later), but what I do watch tends to come on at incredibly inconvenient times for me. Case in point, SVU is coming on as I type this now. More later.