I was like, this >< close to becoming one of them. You just don’t even understand.

As those of you connected to me on twitter know, I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday being annoyed at a guy named Zuckerberg.

And so, I sat down on Friday and wrote a whole entry regarding Facebook, and the fact that it wasn’t that the new products are bad, it’s that Zuckerberg and his friends rolled things out in a completely douchebag fashion.

It was concise. It was thorough. It explored the psychology behind creating a product that your customers would want versus cramming your upgrades down the users’ throat. It gave examples, and presented an alternate approach which might not have had so many people utilizing the convenience of what happens when replacing the Z in Mark’s last name with an F.

I wrote this, and I finished, and I felt so much better. Then I started proofing and thought… what am I doing?

Oh holy jesus, I almost became an Angry Internet Person.

Let’s be honest – there’s like 50 of you guys reading this at the most. (Hullo mah peeples!! :waves:) What, precisely, would free-ranging on the internet regarding what some guy who I’ll probably never meet nor have the professional ear of actually accomplish?

Most likely nothing, that’s what.

Back when I was working at Spiffy!Hotel, there was a night when I brought yet another high-end car up to the curb, held the door for a Hollywood fit/artfully tan guy wearing artistically worn-out jeans that cost more than I got paid in a day, shoes whose leather was most likely shipped in from Italy for a value outside of what I make in a week, and a t-shirt no doubt carefully chosen to let us all know exactly how hard he’s not trying because he was inherently Cool Enough to be Above Such Things.

Unlike most patrons of such ilk, he actually did tip me, and as I headed over to put the cash in the tip box, I remember Brandon saying to me, “Why did you walk away? Do you know who that was?”
Claris: Someone who actually tipped?
Brandon: That was Michael Bay.
Claris: …. so?
Brandon: Michael Bay!! The director! This is LA, why didn’t you talk to him!
Claris: Okay, seriously, let me break this down for you – I’m a web designer at a vitamin company. Talking to a director of any kind? Not something that’s going to affect my paycheck, because my landlord doesn’t take “I talked to Michael Bay” in lieu of rent.

–> In retrospect, if I’d know how he was going to portray women in the Transformers movies, I would have smacked him upside the head pre-emptively, rent be damned, but eh, whatcha gonna do. On the plus side, viewed from a purely technical standpoint, the use of 3-D in the highway chase scene in Transformers 3 was pretty freakin’ awesome.

The point being, I kind of had to remind myself of that on Friday afternoon. I can write all I want about how things should be and what the better way to do things would be, but that’s not going to actually change the reality of life. Do you know why?

Because yelling at someone on the internet doesn’t change their mind, it just makes them dig in to their position even more.
Before you comment, the use of bold here is indeed for irony. Don’t be that guy.

One of the best things I’ve heard about changing the way that people think of things comes from an authoress who, due to her request that “What is said at book signings will be denied in public”, shall remain… nameless — an awesome descriptive since that’s actually been suggested as a title for one of her books.

Anyway, she was talking about the prevalence of gay characters in her books, and the fact that there’s no big thing of “Gay and here to stay!” about their sexual preference in the stories, it’s simply something that is, and the reason for that is that in the creative community that her parents worked while she was growing up, that’s how it was treated — there was no ABC After-School Special Sit-Down Talk about the fact that Uncle Timmy was “gay”, it was just that Uncle Timmy loved Uncle John, and that’s the way life was.

One of the things that she said was that she finds it fantastic that her books have a huge following in Texas. The fact that there are swathes of teenage girls in the Bible belt and other such communities who are reading this, and for what is most likely the first time in their lives, these girls are having this concept of homosexuality as an accepted way of life presented to them in a way that is neither confrontational nor demonized, and because it’s being done through the vehicle of fiction, many don’t even realize that this idea has just become part of their sphere of comprehension, or that it will probably influence how they view such things as they get older and are of an age to make decisions in the future.

I’ve been around the internet for… well, we’ll just call it a while. Some of the sh*t y’all do as normal internet behaviors are stuff that other people wrote textbooks on because my friends were the ones that started it. I have seen flame wars, I have seen trolls, I have seen fandoms come and go, I have seen (and been in) feuds that just… make your brain hurt. But you know what I have never seen?

I have never seen someone change their mind because someone else typed about how wrong they are in capital letters.

——————————————–

I had someone tell me once that I’m not a very good feminist. They said this because I wasn’t commenting on things like birth control, or abortion rights, or rape awareness. I heard this, and I’m not gonna lie, I kinda laughed. I laughed because outside of the internet, I had just spent the past year breaking down some bullsh*t allegations made against me by a bunch of good old boys who’d thought they could pin the issues in their personal lives on me to cover up their crap and then sweep me under the rug. Unfortunately for them, I don’t scare that easy, and while one ended up on what I hear was a pretty severe employment probation, I really hope the other truly absorbed some learning from his employer-mandated anger management therapy.

Earlier this spring, I had to explain to someone why I wasn’t coaching anymore, and in doing so I said that, penalties to those men aside, the thing which came out of it that I’m actually happy about is that the day after AngerManagement!Issue backed me against a wall and bullied me in front of a bunch of teenagers, I got up, I went out, I went to the boathouse, and I rowed. I’m glad I did that not only for myself, but also because, completely by chance, when I was finishing my workout and pulling back into the dock, I looked up and at the top of the hill were five or six of the girls who’d seen me get yelled at the day before.

Rowers really aren’t verbal people. As a rule, they don’t Sit Down and Talk About Things. (at least, not well.) They looked at me. I looked at them. We all did the Head Nod Thing, and then everybody moved on.

What I said to the guy that I was explaining things to was this – I am glad I rowed that morning because if those girls learned anything at all from what they saw happen to me, I would want them to have seen that I would not be bullied away from being an athlete. No one would drive me out simply because they needed a scapegoat.
I would want them to learn that standing up for the right thing does sometimes mean you’ll get bumps and bruises along the way, but if you are willing to live by the courage of your convictions and work from a place of what is right, ultimately you will find you’ve won by simple dint of having outlasted the idiots.

I don’t need to write about being a philosophical feminist on the internet because I prefer to be a functional feminist in how I live my life.

Anger, bigotry, horrible acts against others — these things have existed since one brother took a rock to the other. But what has been there before any of that is the right thing to do. We do not know the story of Cain and Abel because murder is the way things were set up to work. We know of it because it deviates from the way the Higher Power supposedly set things up to be.

I am at best what could be classified a Recovering Catholic. Bless you, George Carlin.
So while not an active practitioner of… anything at the moment, I do have 13 years of Catholic school studies in my academic repertoire, and just off the top of my head I’m pretty sure that at no point in the story of creation is the line, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. AND THEN HE RUBBED IT IN LUCIFER’S STUPID FCUKING FACE ON TUMBLR.”

With the exception of the junior boy whom I caught trying to do a one-off 2k test in the middle of August, telling someone they are a dumbass will most likely not change the way that person views the world.
And even in that case, he was willing to acknowledge his stupidity because he’d just learned the futility of his uninformed decision. In short, he laughed when I went, “Okay, you know you’re a dumbass, right?” because, while admittedly a rather painful lesson, he’d learned something new.

Education breeds awareness.

If you don’t like the way things are, stop writing about it to other people that agree with you, and get up and do something to help change it. But do so with the knowledge that these things take time, and anger will not open minds.

Those teachers? The ones that you loved? That you were eager to go to class to see? You went there because you wanted to be around them. Because being around them made you feel better, so you were willing to find out what knowledge they had to share, and maybe give it a try yourself.

The same goes for educating the public, especially when you’re bringing information or a point of view that’s different from what they’ve been taught is the way of the world. These things don’t happen instantaneously, they don’t happen because you’ve RT’d a Facebook opinion, or because you said “F*ck you!” on the internet. Change occurs because you’ve gained someone’s attention through trust or interest, and they are now willing to consider your point of view. The problem is, nobody wants to listen to the person that’s always angry all the time.

So please, stop yelling. Stop bold-italicizing your caps lock. Start using the brains that you were given, and participate.

——————————————–

You know why the people who don’t agree with you appear to be winning?
They’re the ones that show up.

——————————————–

Get up. Get out. Go to the people who are doing the work and ask how you can help — if you’re in an area of the country where like-minded people are hard to find, they need you that much more. Stuff envelopes, make phone calls, stand outside of Trader Joe’s with your clipboard and know that you’re going to get shot down a bunch, but you’ll also end up explaining who and what you are to people who probably didn’t know before they talked to you.

Create education. Find ways to express your opinion without profanity or hostility. If there’s anything that the recent electoral processes should have taught us, it is that the world needs less negativity more people willing to stand up for sanity.

Do something. Do anything. Get offline, and get into the world, because no matter how much Zuckerberg’s douche-ily presented new products want us to think that our lives are only fulfilled by the right combination of apps, the truth is that Out There is where the people are.

There is a difference between what is conscientious & what is convenient – so if you want to change things Out There, why are you still In Here?

Music: Everything’ll Be All Right – Joshua Radin

previous adventures

• stop signs, trams, & spotify: I am LOSING my friggin’ MIND.
• You ever just read the internet & think, “I’m sorry, what?” (3 examples)

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As part of my inevitable world domination (after which I shall hand things over to Anya to run, I have no patience for administration) I’m working on some SEO stuff.

While I flipped to the new template (that MrWhyt hates) due to functionality, I’m slowly changing things a piece at a time so it’s all so much more… me.

As part of figuring out what works & what doesn’t, while
I know a lot of you comment & Facebook like through the FB listings, if you could get in the habit of doing it here, that’d be rockin’.

Yes, I have a Pinterest account, but stuff like this is why I’m afraid to use it.

Why yes, actually I do turn everything to sh*t by Bloggess

They have a little blurb article on ApartmentTherapy.com called Expressing Your Love In Your Home. Any time I see something like that, I automatically have the urge to put my finger down my throat and imitate the dramatic huuuuuuuaaawwwwwk noise that I get the pleasure of hearing when Zoey eats grass then goes to the bathroom to throw up. (Yes, my dog throws up in the bathroom. We’ve been in LA a decade, that’s what she picked up. :sigh:)

I need… balance to my cuteness. and possibly learn to become a nicer person.

… eh, who are we kidding — the first one is more likely.

Well, I am looking to move this fall…

Swedish house up for sale, complete with skeleton
On the one hand, that’s actually kinda cool. On the other, I fear I’d never be able to get Zoey out of the basement — she’d just sit in front of the glass all day, trying to figure out how to get to the treasure trove of chewies…

Not to sound like a stalker, but just so you know, I’ve been in your car.

So last week, I told you the story of how I may or may not have had… an experience with our IT dept desk.

During that, I mention that Abrams & I had a mystery email that disappeared in her attempt to schedule coffee with me. Which for all I know, may have been the cosmos trying to help her.

Well we finally managed to defeat scheduling, the email system, and buck the gods enough to acquire 16oz of sugar & caffeine mixed with a small amount of milk.

In the course of this, Abrams mentioned that her husband worked as one of the South Park animators, which seriously is pretty freakin’ cool to begin with.

But then a thought occurred to me.
I know, I love when that happens to.

And I said, “Okay, this is probably gonna sound weird, but I think I’ve been in your car.”

–> Enter the backstory:
In the course of my time gettin’ my doll on as I ran around Los Angeles wearing pink & parking everyone’s car but mine, one of the parties that we did was the staff party for the South Park 100th Episode. It was up in this out of the way place north of PCH in Malibu, across from (one of) James Cameron’s house(s) — I remember that because James Cameron has these massive black dogs, and when I stand there & say, “Damn that’s a big dog” — that says somethin’.

Anyway, at that time, there were some concerns that the party might get hassled because the South Park crew had been having a small… problem with a certain supposed religious sect regarding an episode involving a certain actor whose name might rhyme with… “Com Schmooze”. It seems that the two parties were having a philosophical difference regarding the fact that Scientology believes they’re full of aliens and the rest of us think… they’re crazy.

Thus, the procedure for this party was that the cars were taking to an offsite lot & then driven back up to the out of the way location. (Incidentally, the event site did involve driving over an actual small body of running water through a rather dark, heavily aborial area, & all I could think of the whole night was Cartman in my head saying something about going over the river & through the motherf*cking woods & Grandma turning out to be a freakin’ Christmas poo.)

But, outside the Secret Garden, back down in the parking lot for the Malibu Public Library, I had an assignment. My mission: to put one of the plush South Park characters into the backseat of each car & seatbelt them in like actual children. (Yes, those were our actual instructions.)

Well, being me, I noticed that a great many of these cars had carseats, which not only filled me with joy at the thought that the people who gave us South Park are breeding to help combat the rabbit-like proliferation in Red States, but also allowed me to amuse myself by situating the dolls into the car seats instead of just in the backseat. Because when you’re spending six hours on a Friday night wandering between a parking lot & a secluded wood in Malibu, it’s the little things that make life better.

Thus, last week I was able to look at my co-worker & say, “…and you got in the car & there was a doll in your carseat. Yup, that was totally me.”

\m/

Welcome to LA, people — eventually, you discover that everybody really does know everyone, and the reason the car washes do such great business is that at some point, we’ve probably been in your car.

Music: 5 years time – Noah & the Whale

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As you might guess, this leaves me & those who work these sites awash in fascinating activities such as reading, working on laptops, cleaning out our cars and…. playing Twister.

We discovered that the back of Dennis’ truck contained many things, from a legnth of heavy chain to a tarp (which made me theorize he was sidelining to more nefarious career choices) to… a Twister tarp. (He swears he doesn’t remember how it got there.)

Boys being boys (I at 30 am oftentimes the old lady of the bunch) Dennis & Sean decided it was a great time test the Twister to make sure it still worked properly, except of course, we didn’t have a board. Being the smartass geek I am, I flippantly suggested, “I’ll bet there’s an app for that.”

Turns out… THERE IS!
Behold – the Twister app.

Once that bad boy was downloaded, the guys had at it & once I figured out how to use Dennis’ phone (it’s not an iPhone! :gasp of horror!:) they shared some quality time together as roommates should:

Happy crystals.
When you’re in LA, you hear a lot of New Age theories, some on par, some interesting, some dubious, some just obviously created with the aid of heavy hallucinogens. Full disclosure: I say this last part with the full self-awareness that I myself am a Vedic meditator & a certified Reiki practitioner, so I’m not sitting up in my tower of glass & cement laughing that the uneducated heathens dancing naked under the full moon in worship of the bull god Baal on the rocks below. However, let’s be honest, sometimes you hear things that are just… really?

One of the interesting concepts that I have heard in my time is the theory of water crystals. There is a doctor in Japan who believes that by putting a certain printed word under a container of water, the water’s molecular structure will actually change slightly to match certain shapes, and the water itself will have the emotional sentiment of the word that was “suggested” to it. At one point, ZenMistressE actually gave me my own set of these cards because hey, you gotta figure – it can’t hurt.

I was reminded of this today when I had to go buy a new Nalgene for myself — the Cal one that I’d inhierited forever ago finally disappeared for what I suspect is the last time, so I needed a replacement. And, since I have the motor skills of a drunken four year old, I always get the little rubber sippy insert. It was with Japanese Water Crystals in mind that I chose this little guy to come home with me:

Smile!

You gotta figure – it can’t hurt.

Quittin’ a gig, jiggedy-jig
The rather large project that KC was working on which caused me to drop everything for four days has, theoretically, come through. In addition, I’ve been offered a part time gig at Museum!Co where Polgara works which should last at least a month, probably through the end of the year if not beyond. With this in mind, I’m hoping that this coming weekend is my last working at Not!So!SpiffV!Hotel.

I got the verbal go on Museum!Co on Friday afternoon while driving down to San Diego, and while several people have been like, “Just quit! Don’t go this weekend! F*ck them, they cheat their employees!” and the knee-jerk part of me wants to do that, the blue-collar kid who doesn’t yet have three months’ worth of bills in the bank for safety just can’t quit one gig until I’ve started the next, so I’m going to work this weekend until I feel comfortable & secure that the gig with Museum!Co actually will start & be stable — it’s just been too long, and while I recognize that it’s most likely me being overly paranoid, a job where I’ll make enough working 16 hours a week to replace both EDD and all of my valet gigs in one shot… it’s just too shiny & too good to be true for me to accept it right off the bat. I mean, I’m not refusing it, gods know, & I’m certainly grateful for it, but I’ve just had my hopes raised too many times to simply jump without a net anymore. Besides, I haven’t finished The List, so every bit helps, eh?

How goes The List, you may ask?
It goes. There has been actual progress:

• Pet Insurance – Accomplished!
  Zoey has pet insurance now (or at least I’ve paid the first quarter of the year, that’ll be ongoing) and she got all her shots. She has some fatty tumors (non-threatening) that need to be removed & get her teeth cleaned, & since she’s under, get her chipped for when I’m away this summer, and the total for that is about $2k — I still need to check with the insurance to see how much they reimburse, but should this all result in a money shot of Zoey sporting a Cone of Shame, you the internet will be amongst the first to know.
• Fear of Municipal Servies – Erradicated!
  all of my parking tickets are paid – take that, meter maids! (What do they call guys that are meter… maids? Meter butlers? Not the same ring.)
• Three months’ worth of bills in the bank – gaining on it!
  We are up to a whopping % progress on that, thank you very much. Once I finish the site for Radio!Co, I ought to be able to crest the total for having a full months’ worth of bills in the bank, which = awesomeness.
• One set of C2 oars that are just for me – almost there!
  When I was down in SD over the weekend, I mentioned to Kate that I was saving up for a set of C2s of my very own — new, they’re about $500, but luckily for me one of the coaches has a set of one year old C2s that he’s selling for half off new since he bought a pair of Croakers. What can you do, sometimes there’s just no accounting for taste. *g* While I had the cash in the bank, I decided to wait until the end of the month to actually buy them so I’d have a wee bit more padding in my bank account before I wrote a check. However, by around October 1st, that should be taken care of.

—————

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go move a couple of cars up to the top parking lot – in the true fashion of America, I’m off to interrupt my Romanian co-worker, whose phone conversation just went, “Romanian-Romanian-Romanian-Romanian-Facebook-Romanian-Romanian-Romanian-fuck that…” Ah, America. We bring so much to other cultures…

Also also? This is awesome:

Music: White Horse – Taylor Swift (Fearless)

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KC’s working on a thing. It’s a big thing. Like a money amounts that I can’t even concieve of thing. In the multiple tens of millions of dollars kind of realm. And to help prep her pitch for it, I’ve pretty much spent Monday through Wednesday at her place. Yesterday I just brought clothes & slept over – because yeah, it was like that. If it goes through, it’s three years of work for her which would then to a lesser extent also mean three years of work for me. And considering that I’m pulling in almost half a months’ rent for three days of work just to create the proposal – trust me, we ain’t talkin’ minature spuds.

The good news is that it got put in on time, and the initial feedback is good, so things look all right, but both KC & I have the same attitude – we believe it when the contracts are signed.

In the meantime, my other clients? yeah… Dropping everything for three days definitely left me doing some fast talking & quick hopping to shift things around. I’ve got this pile of little things to do, and then the very large task of trying to bring one client’s site to a soft launch on Monday (thank the gods for federal holidays!) so they can test it Tuesday, and there’s still a good amount to be done.

Really? That’s the way it is? For REALZSIES?
So, I have discovered exactly why the tips suck so hard at SpiffV!Hotel. You see, this has always kind of bothered me – we have a VIP section, & they park these Porsches, and Bentleys & Ferraris there every Fri & Sat night, but I’m still taking home jack for sh*t for tips, which made like no sense to me – at Spiffy!Hotel, the supervisors (who are on a proper full-time salary & therefore don’t pull tips) would handle those clients, but then put that money in the tip jar so to fatten the pot for their valets — this kept good valets coming back for economic reasons, thus making the supervisors’ lives easier with less employee turnover & a supply of experienced valets which made everything run smoother.

But at SpiffV!Hotel, the supervisors keep those tips for themselves. On top of their salary.

As the girl working for 8.50/hr before tips & without health benefits, I’d like to take a moment to ask, “Say motherf*cker what?”
Never have I heard of such a thing. It’s like your boss pocketing your Christmas bonus — we don’t get much as it is, & they’re keeping the part that makes it half decent? Bite me.

Here’s the trick – I can’t just quit. Before I do that, I have to set up the economic equivalent of those 12 hours of work a week to make sure that I don’t eff up my finances, not to mention I’ve got another three weeks of EDD to collect, & you can’t just tell the State of California you’re going to collect more unemployment because you quit your job due to the fact that the bosses are greedy fuckwads, because if that were allowable I know way more people that would have quit their jobs by now.

Music: The Scientist – Coldplay

previous adventures

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

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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)

previous adventures

• Thank the gods for the IRS.
• Running, retail & why spellcheck is your friend.
• Not enough time, ATMs that judge, & zombie preparation.

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Moments of technological commentary:

1. Talking to someone about being a valet & saying, “I pretty much get paid to play automotive Tetris – OH MY GOD, I never even thought of it, but there’s probably an iPhone app for Tetris!” :fist of triumph!:
   Oh yeah. My valet time just got way awesomer.
2. Every time I get a set of keys that doesn’t have a clicker, I’m always like, “Daaaaamit, now I have to actually look for the car…” oh technology, how did anyone valet before you?

Yeah, I could play here.
Went over to Blankspaces on Tuesday & tried it out for a couple hours. It’s not bad – just basically office space. It’s more the gesture of going somewhere specifically to work instead of trying to do things at home & thinking, “I could work after my nap” or “Polgara did leave the Supernatural s. 1 DVDs… I could put them in & work at the same time!” (Is work done? yes. Is a productive amount of work done? eh… not so much, no.)

I have a free week to try out that begins on Saturday, so I’m going to remand my puppy to the care of her playmates next door (and, you know their human that pays the bills) and basically spend the time that I would normally be valeting for Dolls or Prem!Co working on trying to churn out the backlog of work that I have.

This is what Chuck feels like, isn’t it? Or, it would be if Chuck were a real guy.
So I haven’t gotten a check from EDD since oh… May. They keep effin’ up my claims. The good news is that by the time I get caught up to now on the forms, I won’t need to continue filing for checks, but having the last, oh, two months’ worth of checks would greatly help me do things like… get caught up on my rent. With that in mind, I went down to the office on Crenshaw to achieve an actual conversation with an actual California state employee. (I know, Cali residents! It’s rare & exciting – I feel like I should have a button that says, “I’m an EDD Slayer, ask me how!”)

In the course of talking to the gentleman on the phone (you don’t see people in actual person, you just get to use the direct line to call them) and when he found out that I’m a web designer, he began talking to me about how he had someone making a website for him, but before they’d do anything, he had to get “the PayPals” in order to send the deposit, and while he didn’t mind, he was a 58 year old guy who’d been through two wars & just didn’t understand this whole technology thing.

This resulted in me explaining PayPal & how it works to him, and why it is that they need to make small deposits into his bank account in order to verify that it actually exists. In return, he did… something to make sure my first check was expedited to me, set it up so I’ll get all the back claims at once instead of having to wait a week inbetween, & strongly urged me to go to the CA state jobs website since according to him, “We could use some nice smart girls like you working for us around here.” I dutifully allowed him to instruct me as to where the site is, & took down the url for a friend who could probably use it, but let’s be honest — I just wouldn’t work well as a full time state employee.

In the meantime, the first check showed up yesterday, along with the back claim forms — I kinda can’t wait to get that money in if for no other reason than that my landlord’s gonna be ridiculously happy when I’m suddenly caught up on rent!
(I’ve been in my building for nine years as of January ’11. Since most of us work in creative industries, a couple of us are actually a month or so behind, but in this economy it’s actually easier for my landlord to just let us skate along until we get caught up & keep the solid residents than to try to find new renters. and considering that West Hollywood has rent control, thank god for that.)

—————–

Overall, I feel like I’m making progress, but in the way that you’ve just organized a single bookshelf and still have the entirety of the Louvre to catalog before you’re allowed to take a break to pee. More to do, more to do, and I would just love it if I could put everything on pause & take a nap.

Music: The Scientist – Coldplay

previous adventures

• Then we watch and wait and do nothing but sigh and hope everything is gonna turn out right…
• Goal for Thursday: don’t freak out
• parking cars, building walls, and creating structure: oh yeah, I’m livin’ the dream.

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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

previous adventures

• Then we watch and wait and do nothing but sigh and hope everything is gonna turn out right…
• so long & thanks for all the fish.
• Goal for Thursday: don’t freak out

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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.

“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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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

Music: Adele – Live from Soho

previous adventures

• Who says I can’t be free…

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• 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.

previous adventures

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

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