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One step forward, severe danger of cargasm, & thank the gods for 24 hour tea.

August 23rd, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, work

One more off the list…
One of my fellow dolls got a gig up at Big Sur doing an internship in her actual field of expertise. In true Doll fashion, we all wished her well on an escape from LA that didn’t require Kurt Russel or large explosions and then took a look around to see which of her shifts could be picked up to fill in our own gaps.

You see, D pretty much had a lock on this little place called LPC for lunch shifts five days a week. Restaurants are great things for us because they have a much higher cash yield, so those shifts are in heavy demand. With my schedule, I was able to call dibs on Wed & Fri lunch shifts, thus leaving me free to still pick up shifts for other parties in the evenings if I was so inclined.

Wed went fine – LPC is a small place with a tiny parking lot, so it’s not so much a difficult gig as one where you just have to hustle when you’re the only one there. The result being that when I counted out the cash yield for Wed afternoon, the result was exactly the amount needed to finish paying off the 2nd of my three tickets. (I’d had the cash about two weeks ago, but then I had to dip into it to pay for things like, gas and food and… life.)
However, when I counted up, did the addition, & realized I’d ended up with precisely $122 in the Orange Clutch Purse o’ Doom, I figured that was a sign from the cosmos that it was time to ante up & get that out of the way, so one visit to an actual Bank of America teller, 2 hours to let the deposit process & a virtual pit stop at the City of West Hollywood’s website later, I am now two tickets down, one to go. :fist of triumph!:

Really, my only issue with working LPC shifts is the uniform – black pants, white shirt, black vest. This doesn’t sound so bad until you figure in that it’s from 11 – 2:30pm, during the hottest part of the day and it’s in the high nineties in the friggin’ valley. Ugh. First thing I had to do was go home & shower. That right there? Prime example of why I don’t live in the Valley — the temperature dropped ten degrees just in driving home to WeHo.

Alert! Possible cargasm!
Here’s the thing – when you work for three different valet companies, after a while you can get a little… jaded. In my case, this often means that I simply leave my uniform in the car for a day or two at a shot, change into it when I get onsite, and usually tend not to look up where I’m going until that day without verifying anything beyond the address, never mind the site for the event. Last week, I moseyed off to an address in Bev Hills about two miles from my place for a three-hour shift which as I mentioned to Chalecki made me feel like I was off to see Gilligan.
I did not, in fact, find Gilligan. Intead I discovered I was working an event at the McLaren dealership, which is just… I’m not gonna lie, it was hot. They were unveiling the new model, so as you might guess, the cars of the attendees were also just so sick, I can’t even tell you.

Now, I’ve been a valet on & off for about six years now, and I’ve driven a lot of cars – Hell, I’ve driven a Bugatti. (Sadly, McLaren is one of the few that are still on the “not tried yet” list, along with a Shelby Cobra.) But with the cars that pulled up that night, even I was like, “Oh holy Jesus, look at this hardware…” Multiple Ferraris, a Lamborghini, three Rolls Royces that I saw… it was rockin’.
The problem for a valet company in this situation being… having valets with the experience to actually drive cars of that caliber.

Illustration of this being when one of the guys got into a Lotus & could not start it. Ya know what? We don’t have time for that. I realize that Prem!Co doesn’t do as much high-end or celebrity stuff as I do with the Dolls, but sitting out front of the McLaren dealership with two Porsches behind you & the dealers standing next to the Lotus telling you, “If you can’t drive it, find someone that can” — that is not the time to try your hand at a car like that. The guy was just sitting there & wouldn’t give up on not being able to drive & the dealers were all, “Does anyone here know how to drive this car properly?” So I went, “um, I do.” So they kicked my fellow valet out of the car, instructed him not to go near anything more than a BMW for the rest of the night, & handed it over to me.
(Yes, this event was so up there that a BMW was the common car for the night.)

And for the rest of the night, that’s the way it went – something tricky & high-end came up, & they held it for me to take, which was kind of funny for the event attendees, as I heard several of them remark on the fact that the girl was getting all the expensive stuff. After I parked the Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4, one of the guys Sean looked over & informed me “:sigh: You’re my new enemy.”
I laughed & asked, “Is it because they’re giving me all the good cars?”
“Dude – you just got the Lamborghini & I’m parking a friggin’ Prius!”

Here’s the thing – and this is what I explained to Sean on the walk back to the staging area – yeah, I got the “better” cars, but that also means that it’s my ass on the line if something goes wrong. The garage we were using by the WGA theatre is not big, the driveways are narrow & twisty, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room. So if when I’m going around the turn between the metal railing and the cement wall with that Rolls Royce whose hood appears to reach out Buzz Lightyear style and something scrapes… I’m the one that’s eff’d. Financially, the company will pay for things, but to appease that owner, I’d probably be fired. That’s the risk you take every time you get into a car like that – there is no room for error. Period.

One of the guys found that out when I was off on another run & he decided to go & pick up one of the Rolls Royces even though it was marked as one of the ones that only I was allowed to get. He made it out & delivered the car okay, but afterward he said, “I thought it’d be fun, but holy sh*t, I got in & realized how much that thing was worth & I’ve never been so scared in my life as when I drove that car.” There was really nothing I could say except, “Well, yah. Welcome to my world.”

Will say though – the downshift on the paddle control for the Ferrari transmission is way smoother than the Lamborghini – one of the guys waiting for his car seemed rather proud of me when he asked how I was liking the automotive selection & that was my answer — seems that Ferrari’s been working on that aspect for a bit now, so congrats guys, job well done.

Meanwhile, I still have not driven a damn McLaren. :sigh:

my night in a photo - I parked the Rolls next to the Ferrari after I brought the Audi R8 back to its owner.

Nothing says awesome like 24 hour tea.
Finally, the freelancer’s dream has opened in my neighborhood – a 24 hour coffee shop. The Coffee T Bar is totally my new favorite thing. It’s there! Whenever I am! I less-than-three it!

I’d been up during the day already just to make sure I knew where to park, etc. Then after I got out of the McLaren gig, I tried out the 24-hour aspect of it & found that on a Thursday night, it was awesomely chill, which may have to do with the fact that it’s also a hookah bar. Thankfully the space is in what looks like a converted Pinkberry, so there’s a huge long outdoor area, thus making it possible for me to work & not have to smell the smoke from someone else’s Raspberry Dream.

Between the free parking just south of Sunset, comfy couches, protected outdoor space with copious electrical outlets, and unlimited internet access, I think I’ve found the answer to my quandry of attempting to cram design work in while everyone else is sleeping versus the tempting haven of napping that is my bed when I work at home. Add in the fact that the switch from techno to Bon Jovi’s greatest hits would indicate that the playlist is employee-controlled, and I think we have a winner.

Plus on the way out they gave me free cookies. I don’t know which one of you miscreants told them that I’m easily bribed by free food, but hey – it’s workin’ just fine.

Music: Everywhere I Go – Lissie (Why You Runnin’ – EP) Why

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parking cars, building walls, and creating structure: oh yeah, I’m livin’ the dream.

August 4th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, rowing, screw you cosmic muffin, semantics, work

Friday
I keep thinking I need to get one of those Nike watches so that I can clock how far I actually run/walk/traverse in a weekend. Not that it’ll affect anything, just out of curiosity.

HCR is a studio lot – we don’t really valet people’s cars here so much as direct traffic and shfit things around when it gets full enough that parking becomes double-stacked & others are blocked in. Honestly, it’s one of the easier sites I’ve ever worked – I did my first shift yesterday because they needed help this week, & I signed up for another shift next week. Non-tip means that you automatically get $3 more an hour, and the fact that once the call times have passed you’re basically watching a dead parking lot means that I can bring my computer & possibly get some coding done. Add in that it’s only about 1.5 miles from my apartment, and I think I’ve found my new favorite shift.

Friday’s offline project is starting to code the redesign of my portfolio site. it took a while to get something that I didn’t hate, and this I think I can live with for a bit. My present site is woefully behind both in style and in the work that I’ve done since then, so ya know. It’s time.

Best Reason Heard Today of why to let someone park in a spot that lets them keep their keys:
“I’ve got a gun in the car.”

:hands up: Hey, man, park away and keep your keys. No worries.

Friday night:
Shifting Spiffys – I have to say that I’m awfully disappointed in SpiffV!Hotel. When they first offered me a hotel gig, I was like, “rawk! \m/“. After all, in my time at Spiffy!Hotel, I would pull in $70/night in tips & up — not bad for a valet gig in a town where msot of the server gigs are taken because everyone wants to be in the movies.
SpiffV!Hotel, however, is consistently yielding about $25 as a good tip on Friday and Saturday nights, and honestly I just need to make more than that — I know enough about how this sh*t works to know I should be making more than that. So, on Monday i will be going over to Spiffy!Hotel to see if they have any openings on Friday & Saturday night. Luckily for me, they actually have two locations – West LA & Hollywood, so I’m hoping they’ll have work for me at either one. We’ll see.

I realized on my way over that I forgot to leave my white longsleeve in the car, which means I’ll spend the night reminding myself that cold is good for speeding up the metabolism…

—————
Saturday:
You know what car I’m totally digging right now? The BMW 128i. They’ve started showing up more & more the last month or so, and I have to say, if I was going to get a Beemer, I wouldn’t mind one of them. I would pick a BMW over a Benz anyway, just because to me it always feels like the BMW has more heft to it and Mercedes just don’t seem all that stable, but I do like this leetle sporty thing in particular. Nice play, BMW. Nice play.

Malibu
Arrived late to wedding shower because the 101N was s-l-o-w… I’ve got about 2.5, 3 hrs of sleep in me, which has, it would seem, turned me into Britney from Glee. At one point I actually just stopped & went, “Okay, I need to go to my car and get my longsleeve because it breezy and I’m cold so now I’m whiney.” Luckily, the nice thing about working with Dolls is that it’s kind of like our very own little car-parking sorority, so the other three girls I was working with just laughed and told me to shut up. Ah, love – that’s what keeps me coming back here doncha know.

The party that was supposed to get out at 4:30 now wants us to stay until 5:30, thus negating any time I’d have inbetween to get an hour of work in before having to go to my Sat night shift at SpiffV!Hotel. :sigh: LH has to jet, the party that the other girls are going to a mile away as their next shift is starting & she’s got to supervise, so there’s three of us at the end – the Sup, the shuttle, & me as valet to fetch cars. Time to hop to it…

… because we actually didn’t get out until 6pm. The contract had been filled out & signed for 5:30, which means that the company technically gave the client a half an hour of work for free. While I’ll get paid for the half hour I worked, I already know that’s gonna go over great. We finally had to just hand them keys, tell the client the cars were parked nearby & head out – they were an hour & a half over their contract, & we all had other jobs to work. Next time, plan your event better!

Santa Monica
After a slightly frantic dash down PCH, I managed to get to work exaaaactly on time, thank goodness. Unfortunately, tonight was even slower than last night – someone had reserved the pool area for a wedding reception, effectively killing what bar traffic we normally get. Add in that I’m already tired as all hell, & any time I sit for more than five minutes, my head starts to nod. Not. Good.

Thankfully, when J asked if I wanted the choice between taking a lunch or going home early, I was awake enough to call dibs on going home early, and I jetted out around midnight instead of 2am. No additional shift on Sunday meant I pretty much just crashed out & slept after rowing, so I woke up around 5pm, which is… awesomely unproductive.

My big problem right now is just focus. I feel like I can’t keep my brain on any task for longer than ten minutes. Part of it is stuff that’s going on in my life – I had some sh*t go down on Monday morning that made me upset for the rest of the day, and that pretty much shot my productivity. I called a timeout on that aspect of my life, which unfortunately required using official channels to put up a 60-day barrier against someone. And while I know it hurt them, their damage was hurting me and I don’t have a support structure to take care of me, so after almost a year & a half of trying to be kind about their emotional issues, I drew a boundary to ensure I would be insulated from being used as someone’s designated punching bag.
Granted, this morning it seemed to have gained me a 6’7″ thundercloud shadow who’s trying to figure out how to get around the restrictions I put up & fix things so he doesn’t have to answer questions later, but at least it was something I could row away from for a while, and I didn’t go home in tears, which is progress from my state on Monday so in terms of me paying my rent… well I got more work done Tuesday than I did the day before.

I’m looking into BlankSpaces. While I don’t particularly like the idea of heading into KTown to work every day, the truth of the matter is that home is too conducive to taking a nap, and coffee shops are too distracting. While I don’t want to work for a company, the truth is that I need at least the semblance of office structure to feel motivated to get things done. They have a free day this coming Tuesday, and I signed up for free week trial, so we’ll see – if I’m lucky, I can get enough done in my free unlimited week to justify paying the $200 for 3 mos use of the place. My real worry is parking costs – Hopefully they have either free parking or a reasonable setup with a place that doesn’t cost more than $5/day. We’ll see. It can’t hurt.

Pandora.com helps alot, I will say that. Also, I need to not let the TV run while working – I get a little too involved in how Michael & Fiona are blowing things up instead of concentrating on the structure of my css.

As usual, no matter how hard I try, I seem to be far more productive after the 9 o’clock hour, which is good in what gets done (like this blog entry) but bad in terms of me getting sleep before my workout each morning – especially when Ian’s structuring everything within heart rate zones, so whether or not I get rest has an affect on how fast I’m allowed to row.

There’s a balance here. I know there is. I just need to find it. Hell, I can sit at the catch in a single with oars off the water, you gotta figure eventually I’ll be able to manage this. I hope.

What made me laugh out loud today:

Oregon Trail – the MOVIE!

Music: Look After You – The Fray Look

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Pavlovian politeness, new toys, & hey – you just can’t fix stupid

July 29th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, nerdery, rowing, screw you cosmic muffin, work

You know what, you’re right, this is totally my bad – I forgot to factor in that you’re an asshole.

Chat with Sylvie, part deux.
So in the other part of the conversation that I had with Sylvie, I was reminded that no matter how smart you are, or how much you’ve experienced, sometimes you really just need another person to tell you what you already know before you’re ready to accept it as fact and move on. One of the most notable incidences of that in my life was when my b-i-l looked at me & said, “That’s because your mom is a drunk, honey.” We all knew it, we’d all grown up with it, but that was the first time anyone I knew had had the chutzpah to actually say it out loud. And once it was said, & it was out there, I suddenly had the ability to accept it, factor that in as a reality, & move on with my life.

Same thing happened when talking to Sylvie last week. I was scheduled for an appointment on that Friday morning for something & I was seeking her advice on how to approach it. Her response?

“You need to stop worrying about these people – they don’t give a shit about you. If they did, none of this would have happened in the first place. Don’t worry about being nice, don’t consider them in your plans. They don’t give a shit about you, and they never will because they’re children. Be like a man with the town whore – use them for what they’re good for, then leave.”
I know, right? I laughed at that one too, prudish American that I am.

And intellectually, I already knew everything that she was saying – I’d been saying it to myself for a long time now. But hearing someone else confirm what I thought was just me being a b*tch in the comfort of my own head… there was something about hearing it from an outside party that allowed me to emotionally accept it, if that makes sense. And now, I’ve found that I can look at people & think, “You don’t actually give a damn about me. No matter what you say, or how you act, or how hurt you pretend to be by all this, the truth of the matter is that if you cared, none of this would have happened.”

It’s kind of odd, really – after months of being tossed around like buoy in a storm, I walked in & there was just… nothing. I just classified them in the same cubby as my parents, & it made things way better – you’re here, I have to deal with you, but at any second if given half a chance & left the slightest bit unsupervised, you’ll f*ck me over in a heartbeat & act like it’s my fault.

I just need to remember what I was told by the lawyer I met with that Friday morning: “Before we discuss anything, I need to just say – I can do alot, but I can’t fix stupid.”

Can’t Fix Stupid. Check. Lesson learned, let’s move on.

Congratuations! You’re in charge!
On Saturday, I worked a Doll gig by Griffith Park. Saturday shifts are hard, because I get out of SpiffV!Hotel at 2am, then I crash in the boathouse parking lot until 7am, row, and then have a couple hours until I have a day shift, after which I go back to SpiffV!Hotel in Santa Monica for my Sat night shift of 7/8 – 2am, after which I usually head down to the boathouse at Long Beach so that I can do a coached practice, get there about 3 am (4 if I went home to get Zoey) & crash in my car in that parking lot until about 6:15am.

So working during the on Saturday? kind of a stretch.

Anyway, so I show up at this gig – I’m already 15 min late because of traffic, and LB says to me, “Oh, great, you’re here – what do you want to do?”

Being the Foursquare Mayor of States the Obviousville, I replied, “I thought I’d be parking cars. why?”

“Well, G called & said we’re training you to supervise today, so until SD gets here, you’re in charge.”

ooooooooooooookay. Me in charge.

This should be good.

Now, it’s not like I can’t Team Captain [TC] – I’ve been working on & off as a Doll for six years, I’ve stepped in when needed, I’ve been a trainer, and in a pinch I’ve TC-ed a couple small parties before. It just takes a certain amount of energy to do so that I hadn’t been prepared to expend that day, so when I found that out, I was like, “effin’ ay – really? I don’t wanna!” But, ya know, G & I had talked a bit back about me becoming a TC, so it’s not like this was happening against my will, just not on my expected timeframe.

So there I am, writing tickets, doing my thing, and SD stops me & goes, “You need to stop saying that.”

“Saying what?”

“Have a great time.”

Now, let me pause to explain a reality here – half the time, when I give some situationally-prompted pleasantry reply, I don’t even know I’ve said it. I’ve been working in customer service for different stretches since the day I turned 16, so for me the sheer habit of smiling and being cheerful to people is so ingrained that I can’t help it. I once had a friend point out to me that when I walk up to a cashier, I’m the first one to initiate the question, “Hi, how are you today?” (Which in my world, comes out as “Hey, how ya doin’?”) I could be in the worst mood ever, and I will smile and be pleasant to strangers because that’s the way I’ve been trained – Pavlovian Politeness, we’ve taken to calling it. The point being that I hadn’t even realized I was saying that. However, it did leave a question, which led me to ask…

“why wouldn’t I tell them to have a good time?”

“They’re here for a wake*.”

:pause for moment: “Oh… right. Okay. Well who know, right? it could be an Irish wake.”

*In hospitality, or maybe it’s just a California thing, they don’t call such events a wake. They refer to them as a “celebration of life”. Yah. True story. While I think that’s actually a better way to approach it, this has cause confusion on the part of a couple of girls who thought “celebration”=”actual party”.

But yah – upshot is that it looks like I’ll be doing more gigs for the Dolls where I’m actually in charge of sh*t, which also means I’ve finally got to get around to cleaning out my car so I can fit the sign in the back. :sigh: Mo’ money, mo problems – so friggin’ true.

——————–

I am both a PC & a Mac!
One of the items on The List is for me to acquire an iPhone for myself. This is less because I want an iPhone, & more because of work. To get work for Prem!Co, they send out a pdf of the upcoming week’s schedule, and then you email which shifts you want. Shifts are filled on a first come, first serve basis, so the quicker you respond, the better your chances.

Two weeks ago, I was working SpffV!Hotel on a Friday night when I saw the email for the schedule for Prem!Co come across my phone. Well, I can’t see the pdf on my present phone which I really only got because I fell in the damn marina last March – I got out of the marina, my phone… still down there. (sorry phone!)

Anyway, the schedule came out at 6:30, so I stopped at a 24 hour Kinko’s on my way out of work at 1:30am & filed my shift requests… and they were already filled up. Ugh. Thus, I need to get an iPhone so I can see anything on the internet in order to be able to get work. I’m finally caving.
However, since my contract with AT&T doesn’t re-up until January, I decided to investigate alternate means. I got an offer from my neighbor for his unlocked 1G, which was tempting, but for only $40 more, I was able to win the bid on eBay for a 6-mo old 8GB 3G whose owner has already upgraded to a 4th Gen.

:fist of triumph!:

On the one hand my fear in this situation is that I shall never actually get off the internet. On the other hand, in 3-5 days of shipping time, I’ll totally be able to download the free app that lets you play your iPod like a flute!

Watching: Invictus

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Googlevyl, free music, & land wars in Asia

July 26th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, semantics, work

Note: due to the spastic nature of my life as of late, this one was written over the course of a week & a half

Oh Google – I don’t care if you really are an evyl empire, you’re an evyl empire with Segways & I less-than-three you all the same.
Seriously, I don’t know how I’d get along without Google calendar. The searchability just makes things so much freakin’ easier that it’s ridiculous. For instance, I was off to see Der Familie Schneider for the first time since… December (??) and I realized I’d totally forgotten their address. Thankfully, google was there in the clinch, since my inability to remember…anything has gotten me into the habit of logging as much as I can in my calendar, so the address was available for searching. yay Google!

It’s not every girl who gets her own land war in Asia
I spent the other day turning out three different landing page drafts for one client, thus getting me up to date — with that one client. Sadly, I counted, & there are six seven more after that, three of which are looking to get deliverables from me during the day on Friday. Since I’m writing this while shuttling at a Doll party and we found out that we’re not getting out at midnight as planned, but instead sometime around 2am, I can pretty much guarantee that at least one client will not receive their product during the day Friday. I’m on a traffic direction gig in Malibu on Saturday, hopefully it’s quiet enough that I’ll be able to get something done.

I was talking to a fellow Doll LB about it the other night – it’s this odd little war in my world.

On one side of the table, you have the hourly work of valeting which allows me to have at least a partial paycheck that’s regular, but since it’s shift work & sometimes it’s a heavy on-call schedule, it’s hard to have a regular routine.

On the other side of the table, there’s the freelance work which on the whole is more lucrative and pays a greater amount, but isn’t steady or have any guarantee that the clients will pay on time. So I end up doing the meetings & such to get that work during the days, & then when other freelancers would be working to actually do the work that they have, I’m instead running around working as a valet, which means that I then have to find the time to squinch in the actual production time of doing the work that I’ve done the meetings to acquire.

On the third side of the table is my accursed need for sleep, which for the last few weekends has been achieved by turning the care of Zoey over to my next-door neighbor Mia from Friday night until sometime during the day Sunday (or depending on how late I get out of my Sunday shift, Monday morning). This way, with Zoey taken care of, I can just leave work at the end of my shift, drive to whichever of my two boathouses that I’m rowing at in the morning and sleep in my car in the parking lot, thus saving me the gas of going back & forth to West Hollywood & gaining me at least an hour of sleep since I’ve cut out travel time.

…which leaves me facing off in a three sided war against two different jobs & my own body’s desire for rest. Since I’m student of history and 99% of my family is German/Austrian/Hungarian all the way down both lines, I’m painfully aware that much like arguing with a Sicilian when death is on the line, fighting a three-sided war most likely will not end for me in any way that can be defined as “well”. :shakey fist at universe:

End result being that I end up feeling a lot like this guy:

Free Music Alert!
I lurvers me the free music, and this round comes from Sarah McLachlan, the awesome Lilith Fair goddess. Have at it, kids:
http://lilithfair.com/itunes/usa

Meanwhile, if you want to pick up the newest version of Lilith Fair’s CD, give this link a whirl: Lilith 2010 Lilith

Music: Adele – Live from Soho iTunes

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Goal for Thursday: don’t freak out

July 8th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', completely random, girl valet, money, rowing, semantics, work

Things that need to be done:

row entire workout without ribs hurting from having been hit by motorcycle last Wednesday – it’s been a week, it’s high time this sore ribs sh*t was over.
meet with Catering!Client at 11am
prep & send contract for Radio!Co
prep & send contract for PR!Co
finish landing page draft for Super!Tooth
finish laundry
look for doggie bathing place for Zoey torture, or just toss her in the tub
work shift for Prem!Co from 6 – 11:30pm
sleep a little*

Other possible activities:

worry
despair
freak out
consider giving up on freelance & getting full time job
convince myself to get my ass in gear
remind myself that no, I don’t need to buy anything at Starbucks’ because I have food & tea at home already & it’s a waste of money.
continually remind myself I just need to get the work done.
try to work on being okay about the fact that I have to do it myself because I’m alone.
lather, rinse, repeat.

*This post is actually progress for me, as it lists sleep in the “Need” category, rather than the optional activities.

Not enough time, ATMs that judge, & zombie preparation.

July 7th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, work

Oy with the vey – Okay, let’s get (a little) caught up.

Who do I work for now?
Three valet companies:
1. Dolls – first love, blue collar sorority, originator of more fun than I’ve ever had on any payroll ever. (and I’ve been on a lot of different payrolls!)

2. Prem!Co – another private event valet co which I was ref’d over to by a fellow Doll because I needed to pick up more hours. Not nearly as fun, and mostly guys, but still – pay the bills.

3. SpiffV!Hotel – high end hotel on the beach in Santa Monica who originally were interested in me as a doorperson full time, but right now I’m just working a fixed Fri & Sat night shift, 8pm – 2am. Named on a variation of the last fixed locale I worked at in Westwood which I called Spiffy!Hotel.

Oh, an in between all this? Still taking clients, trying to maintain the work, and attempting to figure out how the hell I’m going to a) afford & b) fit in Not!Grad School in the fall.

Happy 4th of July! :falls over:
So from Friday to Monday of 4th of July weekend, my life went like this:
Valet – SpiffV!Hotel
Sleep in parking lot at LB boathouse
Row
Lunch w/ Jess
Sleep for an hour
Valet – SpiffV!Hotel
Sleep in parking lot near LA boathouse until Panda Face got off the highway & called to wake me up.
Row
Go home, assure Zoey her mommy was still alive
Drive to Malibu
Work for Dolls for about 8 hours
Sleep for about 3 horus in my bed for the first time in a few days
Row w/ the juniors
Valet – Prem!Co
Get fed awesome food because there’s few things better than a Jewish family having an engagement party/housewarming for their new mansion. (Smoked lox with dill wrapped around cream cheese… oh so good :insert Homer Simpson donut noise here:)
Go home
Sleep from 4:30pm – 7am
Tuesday
Wake up & realize that I had a crapload of stuff to do to get caught up.
Despair.
Do a load of laundry.
Despair more.
Drop off the rest of my portfolio for Not!Grad School review.
Attempt get caught up.
Fail miserably.
Sleep.

…and that pretty much brings us current. Go Team me!

1 ticket down, two to go!
I have this little…problem. It’s called Street Parking. Because as any city dweller knows, when you have street parking, you’re vulerable – your poor car is subject to the leanings of any drunk passerby, as well as the travesty of parking police driven to leave unsightly & economically damaging tickets on otherwise nifty windshields as part of their attempt to do their part to plug the state’s deficit so they don’t have to go on furlough.

Combine that with my unsighly state of unemployment for the last year or so, and hey – those tickets can add up. I dunno that I’ve ever admitted this publicly, but a strong motivator in getting my sorry arse to the boathouse on Monday & Tuesday mornings has been to remove my car from the possibility of a street cleaning ticket lest I discover that I’d messed up & parked on the wrong side of the street, which has a minimum penalty of $55. (Yes, you read that right – fifty-five dollars.)

So as part of my whole “Trying to get my life in order” (which I’m sure I’ll write out & explain later when I have time, but yes, let’s just roll with the concept that I’m trying to get my life in order) I’ve been on a campaign to get rid of these monkeys on my vehicular back, and thus have slowly siphoned a fraction of my cash tips from any job I can spare it off into a clutch purse which sat innocuously amongst the tomes* on my bookcase, sides slowly bulging out with one dollar bills.
*tomes = programming books that I still haven’t had time to do the exercises in yet. :sigh:

Thankfully, the breakneck pace of 4th of July weekend meant that I had finally hit the $154 total needed to pay off the first ticket. (oh yes. you totally read that right. One hundred and fifty-four dollars. For realsies.)

In attempting to recover from the “despair” portion of yesterday, I gathered my pluck and moseyed to the ATM to deposit said cash so that I could pay it off today once the deposit had cleared. After all, Bank of America has the nifty new cash deposit thing, it should be easy peasy, right?

Let’s not play – just the fact that I asked that question should tell you the answer.

The next time I have to do this, someone please remind me to go change the ones to larger bills, m’kay? Because having the ATM process over $100 in one dollar bills was a less than idea experience – wrinkled & folded bills got kicked back out & had to be re-entered, and after the third time of trying to deal with the fact that it only lets you deposit 40 bills at a time, I swear to gods that ATM was making aspersions on my profession based on me being a female in Los Angeles depositing a large volume of $1 bills. Shut it, Bank of America – I’m a valet, ‘mkay? No, that’s not a euphamism – I seriously AM a valet. If I were a stripper, I should hope the hell I’d be depositing way more than $154 after a weekend’s work, or I’d be a really bad stripper.

The upshot being that the money is in the bank, and once I get home tonight to a place where I can print the receipt, I’ll have paid off the biggest ticket, & then there’s just the $122 & the $97 ones to go before I am footloose & DMV free, thank the gods.

——————–
What made me smile today:

Finally – a class that would actually get Sachiel to the gym!
ZombieFit classes. How to prepare for the inevitable apocalypse. yes, you TOTALLY read that right.

What made me laugh out loud today:

I’m not a Twi-tard, but I do less-than-three me The Fug Girls. As someone who often sees the celeb crowd (and the aspiring celeb crowd) in their comings, goings, & rates them based on whether they can spare the valet a $5 when we all know what they made for their last movie, I find the Fug Girls’ sometimes scathing evaluations to be oddly in line with my own inner monologue, and I won’t lie – sometimes when in doubt about what to wear, I have been known to think, “What would the Fug girls say?” (Incidentally, their “No to leggings” is a movement I can get behind)

So it was with that in mind that I read their eval of Kristen Stewart’s newest attempt at a press junket, because yes, I totally think that girl really needs to learn to wash her hair a bit more, and considering my complete lack of patience for anything beyond shampoo & conditioner, that’s what we could call “an indicator”. And while I’m not really a Robert Pattinson fan (he glitters, people. How the fuck can I take a vampire seriously when he glitters? ) I did love thier parting shot:

But now the twosome has gone public, finally, and the stress of hiding — and coming up with new coy denials and vague non-answers — has lifted. The question is answered, and we think it’s a big part of why Kristen can relax and try to enjoy herself instead of waiting for a bullet to dodge. Also: What’s up with the denials in the first place? He’s Cedric Diggory, child. BRAG.

Music: Jakob Dylan – Nothing But the Whole Wide World

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Snoop brought calm to my world. No, not like that.

June 18th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', girl valet, money, nerdery, pop culture junkie, work

Wow, that’s kinda… meta
So E3 Expo is in town this week, which means LA is even more chock a block full of geeks than usual. Possibly bursting at the seams, even. For valets, the amount of private parties & events has everyone hopping to fill shifts.

I signed up for two nights in a row at one event site, and while the organizers thought there would be 150 cars, they were mostly taxis & hired cars, so they were right about the estimate, just not about how many valets would be needed to handle it, which makes for a group of people in black & white standing by the side of a building in downtown LA all staring at their phones.

:pause for PSA:
Dear Internet – how did I ever pass the time as a valet without you? :hugs!:

So there I am, scrolling my Livejournal flist, and I see an article on the Microsoft Kinect and all the fuss around it, rah rah rah. Now, we don’t get told what the event is before we show up for Other!ValetCo. So I’m reading this article on my phone, looking at the people coming in, looking at the article, noticing they’ve all got Microsoft stuff… hey! I’m at the cool afterparty that people are talking about. Go me! Granted, I’m a valet, so the only reason I can get past the security on the 11th floor is because they assume I’m headed to the bathroom, but as I jokingly said to someone, “Right now, every video game geek in town wants to be me!”

Incidentally, after two nights of that was last night at a property which was simply described as “One of Snoop Dog’s places.” While I didn’t see anything, and I personally have spent my entire life footloose & drug free, I’m pretty sure that simply setting foot on the premises automatically invalidated my ability to pass a pre-employment drug screening for 30 days.

It also brought about this comment from me on Facebook:
is it a bad sign when you can say, “working Snoop Dog’s party last night was the calmest 4 hours I’ve had in the last two days”? I think it might be what I’d call “an indicator”…

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Running, retail & why spellcheck is your friend.

June 15th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', money, semantics, work

you said that love was gone, And that I had to leave… what goes up, must come down….

I love when I get directions like this:
Change colors of page/borders – darker/flashier
Instead of blues/reds – Client wants bolder/more exciting/flashier (“think of dreamworkers, sony websites etc.) Client says that we need to consider that people from movie studios and other related persons will visit his site.
Recommends golds, yellows, dark reds, burgundy

Now, a cursory view of those two studios would tells me two things:
1. the client hasn’t actually looked at those sites before giving that critique.
2. the client doesn’t know their colors for proper descriptives.

sigh

——————–

Running, running, running…
oy with the running! much as I love my Dolldom, the work’s been petering off as of late, so I took another Doll’s invite to hook up with a second valet co that she also works for. Got the gig no problemo, and boy howdy do they have work. I’ve worked more in the last two weeks than I did in a month with the Dolls, and I literally had to pick days to take off so I could do design work. It’s not going to be anything I can live on any time soon, but the hours are a comfort, and give me at least SOMETHING that I can depend on getting on a regular basis – problem with design work is that while it pays more than valeting, you have no REAL guarantee of when the clients will pay, so between this & the web/retail gig at Women!Co, I should (theoretically) have the money to be fully off EDD soon. Not going to be rolling in it, but yah – at least enough to have a base to bounce project work off of.

Which reminds me – I need to make a page for The Great Master List – aka, everything that I need to accomplish, pay for, get caught up on, & get fixed. I fear this list may never actually be completed & instead will become an running commentary o’ challenges, but hey – what’s life without tribulations, hrm?

So I guess that “fix my site & occasionally man the front” translates into “You’ll be running the place”?
Retail gig, right? Right. Totally. The theory is that I’m going to work on her site… except that I opened the store & she never came in today. I mean, at this point I’m waiting for her domain co to switch the nameservers before I can really do anything, but we went from “I’ll be in soon” (9:30) to “I’m still at home, but on my way” (12:15) to … now, when it’s 2:30 & there’s no sign of her. I assume at this point that I’m also going to be closing when I leave at 5:30. :shrug: I mean, I don’t care – I’m pretty much completely unsupervised, and I’m not against that. Just observing the whatever of it. She has a girl that works Sundays for her from 11-4 that she says has been flaky since the girl’s getting married, so I told her that if she can give me two days’ notice to rearrange my valet shifts I’d cover those days when the girl can’t be there. I figure five hours a week getting paid almost double the hourly that I’d be making as a valet & doing it as a w-9? Psh. ohkay sure.

Is it wrong that I’ve gone from being the person that’s the hardest working person anyone knows to the one who, after the last year & a half of working & dealing with my boathouse is now just like, “Sure. Whatthef*ckever, as long as I can cash a check.”

When they stand up and talk to the parents at the beginning of each year for the Juniors, they talk about how rowing will increase work ethic, and build character, make them into better people, etc. I have to say I find it amusing that my experience has taught me to be way more hands off, and distance myself from how much I care about what happens to others… and my level of giving a damn is definitely diminished, that’s for sure. (of course, I won’t be putting that on any applications any time soon)

——————–

In other news, when making an ad reviewing a book, one should also review their spelling, lest their words robbed of being… “complelling”:

oopsie…

——————–

What made me smile today:

What made me laugh out loud today:

——————–

Why my friends are awesome:
katiegeeks sometimes a fan club membership and some persistence is worth it. SIXTH ROW SEATS FOR GREEN DAY!!!!!!!!!!!
Claris: @katiegeeks: I’m straight, & your Green Day triumph is making me think you so damn hot right now. just so you know.
katiegeeks: @heroineaddct sexual orientation is irrelevant in the face of ticketmaster triumph.

Music: Karma – Alicia Keys

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Just like freakin’ Ghandi.

May 27th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', money, work

packing, moving… all while not moving an inch…
I’ve spent a good portion of my afternoon just… waiting.

Waiting for what? Files, thank you very much. I got the notifications today for InstigatorInk.com, one of two domains which I bought back in the day over on Doteasy, and I decided that rather than paying another $25/yr for each of them again, I’d just move all the files & domains over to my GoDaddy account & renew now before the .com & .net prices go up.

Oh, and for those of you that remember ye old NoDignity.com, it’s still there, I still own it, and once things are moved to their new home, the readily available content means our old archives may get a facelift this summer as I use it for my Drupal experiments. Keep you updated as we go.

Yes, I do own the url NoDignity.com. No you can’t have it.

Tomay-to, Tomah-to…
True: Federal law prohibits us from using illegal activities as business expenses, and thus even if I blog about them, I cannot write traffic tickets off on my taxes.
(this fact was verified by my accountant last fall. I was kind of sad about it.)

Also true: If I pay with them using the right card, I can get airline miles from them. I’m just sayin’.

Lemme ‘splain. No there is too much. Lemme sum up.
There’s been a lot since I last updated, and honestly, I just don’t feel like rehashing it all. However, I will say that while I am still sans “proper” employment, I’ve at least been interviewing a ton, which is more than I had before, so the next step is to get hired. Should be good times. In the meanwhile, I had a little piece of awesome that wasn’t, and you’ll probably see the format of the blog changing as I start to use it as my conscience while working in a couple other projects which I’ve decided to move forward.

I have a joke that I made once when talking about being nice to someone, & it stuck. I remarked, “Dude, I’m nicer than I used to be, but I’m not fuckin’ Ghandi.”

Someone once said to me, “Ghandi was the most selfish person ever. All he thought about the way he wanted things to be and he wouldn’t listen to anyone else, and eventually, he won.” And really, that is so totally true. So I figure that for the next three months or so, I’m going to spend the summer taking care of me. Just me, the dog, my life… and mother fuckin’ Ghandi.

Like I was sayin’ – good times.

Music: Hello, Goodbye (Glee Cast Version)

What I want is what I’ve not got, and what I need is all around me…

April 8th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', money, nerdery, screw you cosmic muffin

Well that’s a sad moment:
Goodbye, Norma Jean: Apple’s “Get a Mac” Ads are over

I’m gonna miss not watching the difference between a Mac & a PC.

“…I’m crying myself to sleep mode.” hee!

because I’m messed up, that’s why
I have a couple of things to do for work this week, and you know what I’m jazzing on? Not the steady, paying gig that’s boring but stable work. No no, I’m excited about the combat-landing-esque site that I need to bring live by Saturday for a client who called me because they lost their old company (no for real) and now need to start over… now.
(I know, right? But as long as they’re paying, the reasons for the work really aren’t a problem for me – check cashes the same no matter what, my friend.)

And it’s in this that I’ve come to the realization of why I’ve hated my job so much, and really, it’s the same thing that bothers most designers – I’m tired of dealing with people who say they want one thing, & then utterly eff up what I give them. I’ve got one right now – building what will be a fairly complex site – no stylesheet, conflicting directions from the marketing manager & the developer, and I’m just… I literally just don’t even want to do work for them. I procrastinate on it. Horribly. And what I give them isn’t my best work, because when I do that they just rip it up, so I’m totally in this space of, “Whatever, take this.” and gods know that’s not a good point to work from. :sigh:

So instead, I’m having fun with a smaller, emergency site that I’ll get paid way less to do but will have complete creative freedom over – hell, I’ve even re-written most of her copy, which is such a relief to be able to do, considering some of the horrendous English I’m occasionally instructed to post on the internet. (I’m sorry Internet, really I am.)

Kate & I were talking at San Diego two weekends ago, and she confided that she was thinking of leaving her PhD program because she just… didn’t like it. As she pointed out, she could make the same amount of money working at Starbucks & enjoying her life a hell of a lot more than she does as a grad student. And I’m thinking… maybe that’s not a bad idea. I may walk into the Gap I used to work at today or tomorrow & grab an application – I’m pretty sure at least two of my old managers are still there, they’d probably be willing to hook me up with 20 hours a week or so – not much, but something so I at least feel like I’m getting something steady and can relax a bit instead of constantly feeling like I have to take every client because I need the cash.

I dunno. I think I’m just tired of always having to think. I have at least one side project for the summer, and I’ve done my part thus far, but it hasn’t been made an official go yet, and honestly, I don’t feel that I can completely trust the people involved on a business level — the programs are good, the money would be solid, and I’ve already got clients lined up to participate, but that last step hasn’t been done, and based on some behavior that I’ve seen over the last year, I don’t feel secure that someone isn’t going to turn on me & have everything fall through. I’m going to work on getting everything in writing beforehand, but even then I still don’t entirely have faith that I’ll get paid. And I can’t live like that any more, so yes. I think applying to the Gap it may be.

——————-
More than anything, I just feel like I’m not… getting anywhere. I’ve got this whole “shouting at the rain” thing right now. The worst thing about having an idea of what’s coming is the part where you have to wait for it to get here, and carry on with life in the interim. I’m kind of crap at that part.

Note: I just got an email offering me a brand new website for my portfolio site from some spam company. Wow, Universe, thanks so much for that obvious reminder. It’s on the list.

Okay. enough with the kvetching. Back to the salt mines… fun project first, dammit.

Music: Jimi Thing (Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds – Live At Luther College)

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