Posts Tagged ‘time space continuum management’

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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.

SwissOutpost and Swiss Knife Depot

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:

playing at McLaren

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


Dog Days of Summer Sale - Up to 50% off

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sometimes it’s an honor just being nominated.

August 14th, 2010, posted in girl valet, nerdery, school, screw you cosmic muffin, semantics, work

It was an honor just being nominated.
I turned down Not!GradSchool today. It sucked, but when I explained what I was going to do instead, they were actually pretty cool about the fact that yes, I will need to take a couple of prep courses & to sit & determine the best way to do that there, which is nice. So next week when they have the fall schedule done, I’ll go in & figure out which course I should take this quarter, and go from there. :shrug: Such is life – or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

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.

AHAVA Hero Products 728x90

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.

Goodwill Too is going Green!

Music: The Scientist – Coldplay The

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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

Wavee US, LLC

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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!

Wavee US, LLC

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

iPods and Accessories at Goodwill Too

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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.

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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. :D

Music: Karma – Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys - The Diary of Alicia Keys - Karma

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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!

Shop At BBCAmerica.com Today!

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) Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - Live At Luther College - Jimi Thing

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Then we watch and wait and do nothing but sigh and hope everything is gonna turn out right…

March 17th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', money, school, work

Here goes nothin’.
Filled out the initial application online for Not!Quite!GradSchool today. The school that I’m looking at is an atelier program, which means they’re not yet accredited as a Masters’ program — for most professions, this doesn’t mean much, but for art, it’s totally a legit accreditation.

I took a class there last May, & when I first showed up the initial email I sent was basically answered with, “When would you like to start?” so I’m hoping that the application & (gods bless) acceptance process goes quickly… after which I just have to figure out how to pay my tuition – no pressure, no pressure. ;)

Today’s step was just filling in the app – on Saturday, I’ll probably go up & drop off my samples & application deposit. And we’ll see. :fingerscrossed:

In the vein, happened across this photographer, whose pictures I think are going in the files as reference points for future paintings. This one especially caught my eye:

Run, doll run!
Got home from the boathouse today, took a shower, was about to settle into work, & my phone rings – it’s MadamG, & we’ve got a Doll-mergency.

There’s a restaurant in North Hollywood that the Dolls have a contract with, and today when D showed up for her shift, they told that hey! Fifty extra cars were going to show up.

When you’re the only valet doing lunch shifts at a bistro whose parking lot has ten spots, your only gut reaction is… whuuut?? So D called in to the Dollhouse on the 911, and when MadamG looked around, I happened to be home. Not totally in my plans for the day, but I knew I was available & it’s part of the gig, so I sighed, put on my black pants & white button down shirt, asked the universe to make this outing damn profitable and headed up the 101.

Turns out that what was going on was a retirement lunch for a public attorney, so here we are, totally overloaded on space, parking sh*t on the sidewalk and the guests? They’re all cops! Thankfully, the LAPD guys were good about it, & most of them put their cop permits in the window, which basically gave us license to park… wherever. We ended up parking across Vineyard, which meant a quarter mile sprint wearing a white button down shirt & black pants in 90 degree weather in the Valley between noon & 3, when the sun is strongest.
Add in the fact that dashing across Vineland makes any dropoff or retrieval an impromptu game of Frogger, and everything becomes awesome in the way where it’s completely & totally not.

But, come 3pm when everyone had cleared out, D & I totaled up the cash & lo & behold, not only did we make enough to pay our hourlies in cash, but we also cleared some decent tips. After I stopped to acquire some food for myself, I still put another bit in the account for tuition. Almost up to the first month in the bank, so yeah…workin’ on it. First year’s tuition – almost $1k down, $11k to go, and if I get accepted the start date is July 5th. But hey – no pressure, no pressure.

So close to freedom I can almost smell fresh air.
So my client over at Ins!Co. contacted me at the end of last week & wants me to come into the office one day a week to just… talk. To discuss options, maybe do some on-site work, etc. They don’t need a full time designer (which is good ’cause I don’t want to be one for anyone right now) but we’re kind of at the point where things would move faster for both their “official” work & the side project that they have me helping with. Between the two, it should hopefully be a steady 5-10 hours a week, which would help a lot in terms of creating an economic net for me. Right now, my goal is that if I could get about 20 hours a week of work at the rate that I want to be paid, I’ll be fully off unemployment and the project work which pays more in sporadic lump sums. That way, I can live off the steady stuff, & put the project work to building savings & paying tuition.

After the Doll-mergency, I did a call with my one entertainment-related client, NPO!Client. We’d discussed them possibly bringing me on retainer as sort of a web project manager basis — I’d still work from home, but have a contracted 10 hours a week for them that I’d be paid a fixed amount for. Not being a fool, I did the math on the proposal so that it would be about 3/4 of what I need to be completely off the dole – while it would have been the easy out to go for the whole amount, I also am aware of the stupidity of risking the gods’ wrath, so I bid slightly under to keep myself from becoming too dependent upon any one client.

When I didn’t hear anything on it, I kind of let the idea go & moved on, looking for other business. But then I heard from NPO!Client! on Friday that she wanted to do a phone call, & we managed to sync schedules today.

The end result? They like me, but since they haven’t put anyone on retainer before, NPO!Client!‘s bosses want me to work on an hourly/project basis for about 6 weeks at an hourly slightly below what I bid, and then if things work, they’ll put me on contract. If that happens, I’ll be free & clear from EDD, which would be… lovely. Like, honestly nice. And between the two, I’d have enough to live on and be able to put everything else towards my tuition and savings. I keep funneling the cash tips from valeting towards those two things, and I’m slowly building back up — in terms of savings, I’m almost back up to the $1k base that I like to keep & had before I got laid off, which will have been a year ago on the 20th. Once I hit that, I get to continue working on my tuition and trying to put three months’ worth of bills in the bank before I start in on savings again.

And it feels like it’s so much, but I need to just keep reminding myself to move through things one step at a time, and I’ll get there. I’m starting to get there, I’m starting to pull myself out of the hole. I just need to remember not to fuck things up.

Guthy Renker Corporation

Funny ’cause they’re true
Someone went through all the Simpsons chalkboards over the years & picked out 29 of the best. To see the rest, check this out. Personally, anybody that has heard me before 9am or when I’m just generally in a mood will understand why I’m favoring this one:

Music: Everything’ll Be Alright – Joshua RadinJoshua Radin - We Were Here - Everything'll Be Alright (Will's Lullaby)

15% off Orders at OlympiaSports.net! Exclusions Apply. Ends 3.31.10

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Thank the gods for the IRS.

February 23rd, 2010, posted in LA Livin', work

I know, I never thought I’d be saying that either. But hold with me, we’ll get to that.

So I finally cleared away enough work to be able to start working for Utah!Co. Yay, right? I go to log in, & there’s a message – I’ve been terminated. Terminated? I never even worked for you – I put my account on hold. :sigh:

I call this morning, find out that the recruiting guy I’d been hired by that set me up in the system & everything is no longer with the company, but since I filed my paperwork, there should be no problem reactivating me, rah rah rah. Okay, sure. Coolio.

Go out, do a couple of things, come home to an email from them saying that the only positions they have open at the moment are for developers, so even though they hired me, thanks but no thanks — and as a bonus, they were shutting down their external designers & moving that all in-house.

Fuck really?

This was supposed to be my solid, man. And once again, the small shiny light of hope has been dashed. Great.

With that in mind, I hied my way over to Monrovia to see My Man Larry – aka The Best Accountant in The Whole Wide World.

I’ve been going to Larry for… gods, at least five or six years now. NeighborBeth sent me over there when H&R Block had tried to convince me one year that I needed to pay out about $1800. Once Larry got done with things, I got a refund of $2k. Not many people can say that they regularly hug their accountant for the yearly visit, but I’m happy to say I’m in that group. Thanks to Larry’s tutelage in how to write off… everything as a freelancer combined with my having had a W-2 job for the last decade, I walked into this year with a cool $17k tax overage — not a credit, but the amount that I’d have to earn before I had to start paying taxes. I haven’t had any taxes taken out on my unemployment because I figured that these two would just wash one another out this year.

Well, between unemployment & my anal-retentive habit of recording every receipt ever, multiplied by the fact that I’m just damn cheap & have no life, I’m actually getting $1700 back from the state & fed combined this year, & my overage, rather than being washed out, has actually increased. Thankfully, that should take care of things like, re-registering my car and the down payment for my insurance to start the year, and possibly even putting a wee bit into the bank — I have managed to ferret a whopping $400 away in my ING account to replace the face that EDD delaying my payout last May completely fracked my savings. And yes, don’t think for one second that the fact that I only have $400 in the bank as a backup for my life doesn’t freak me out too, because trust me, it so totally does.

… which is why I’m going out tomorrow to more job interviews for part time gigs — there are two restaurants hiring all Front of House having open houses tomorrow, and ya know, I spend enough time there, it’s about dang tootin’ I filled out Starbucks’ application. Hell, I hear that when you do 20 hours a week with them you get medical — I didn’t have that at my last full time job! ;)

Doll gigs have slowed down for now, which is normal until we hit about mid-March & the wedding season starts up again. And while I totally less-than-three MadamG & the girls, if I can get something with regular hours that will get me at least what unemployment pays each week, I’ll feel quite a bit better.

I had a long talk with ZenMistressE Sunday night, and while I am getting design work, I’m not getting enough to feel secure. While the thought of returning to full time employment in an office makes me want to go all Edward Munch, I grew up too poor to be okay with not knowing that there’s a steady paycheck for at least part of my income, and the stress of it is kinda driving me beserk, so I’m going to see what can be done about that.

If nothing else, one of the ads asks for CPR certification as a desirable, and I changed my resume to include it, because hey – I am, and it never occurred to me to put that in there!

Gaiam.com, Inc

The other thing ZenMistressE & I talked about is the fact that part of me getting work done (or the lack thereof) is that I’m depressed. And I know that. I’ve known that for a while. A long while. The truth of the matter is that a good portion of it is that I’m just… lonely. Outside of Doll gigs, I basically see the boathouse, my apartment, and the Starbucks in the Marina where I go to work. I need to make myself go out, and see people that I don’t know, and have more of a life.

Baby step on that is heading to Alyssa’s for group meditation on Wednesday night. It’s not Christian’s house, which is what I’m used to, but we went there once, and it’s nearer to my house, and she seems nice, so I’m going to give that a whirl on Wed night this week. We’ll see. There’s also the Rembrandt drawings at the Getty, which will only cost me $5 to park, so I think that might be on the agenda as well. I want to see the Renior at LACMA, but I need to find out what admission costs — after all, I didn’t get by making less than $30k in LA this year because I was spending outlandishly.
———————————————–
I was congratulated for that, incidentally — having gotten by on unemployment & the commission work that I’ve managed to pick up thus far. Both my accountant & my sister were impressed by my ability to frugal it up, and someone else actually suggested that I should write about it so others can learn from my cheap-osity. I just might do that.

That said, my one splurge from this year’s taxes might be a flip video camera. I keep getting asked about the actual how of some of my recipes, so there may be some video food blogging in the near future. I’ve never actually owned a video camera – we didn’t have one when I was a kid, & I never got around to getting one before now. Me with full audio-visual capabilities. Stand back universe – this could be interesting.

Music: Only Thing That’s Real (Sister 7) Sister 7 - Live - Only Thing That's Real

TuneUp Media Inc. Neon Simple Type Banner.

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Suppose I said I am on my best behavior…

January 30th, 2010, posted in LA Livin', cosmic muffin, nerdery, rowing, screw you cosmic muffin

there are times…I lose my worried mind…

oh, cosmic muffin – now you’re just makin’ sh*t up.
My goal for the weekend was simple – finish Hotel!Client‘s site and get things uploaded to a test server so that I could upload to their server early in the week.
Unfortunately, the universe had a different idea, as my laptop decided it no longer wanted to recognize my passport that I use as an external hard drive. Granted, this is completely my own fault — the part where you should “safely remove” a device when you take it out of your computer? In the migrant style of work that I have, I am admittedly rather pants at taking the time to do that instead of just pulling the cord & moving on to my next destination. This is doubly sad because as a former IT drudge, I know that the reason you’re not supposed to do that is that it sends a small electrical shock through the device each time, & eventually, it stops working. (As I said to ZenMistressE today, “Really, can you blame it? I mean, if I kept electrocuting you two or three times a day, you’d probably decide to stop working for me too.” :shrug:)

So yesterday & today was spent backing up the files on that over to my WD Book that I use as my backup. However, in the philosophy of trying to roll with what the universe gives me, I can’t help but think that this was a preventative measure on the cosmic muffin’s part, since when I went to Target today to find 4BG flash drive for a ridiculously low price. Considering that I remember when a 1 GB drive was fantastically huge file capacity & we thought it a great deal at $30, I’m totally willing to cop to having had a “uphill in the snow both ways” moment in technology when buying the 4GB.

However, the files are transferred, so there’s work to be doing when I get home from tonight’s Doll gig. After all, sleep is for the weak, right? *snerk*

Whistle while you do it, damn you!
Doll work is ramping up again as people start to poke their heads out from the party hangover of the holidays. Tonight’s my 3rd gig in four nights, & I just got another notice for one tomorrow afternoon, which sadly meant I had to cancel on seeing Avatar with RocketScienceGuy. I tried to reschedule for Monday night, but haven’t heard back from him, so we’ll see if it’s off to the ArcLight for a 3-D in IMAX I go.

I’m still plugging my way through my backlog of work – one site put to bed & ready to be billed this weekend, hopefully soon the Hotel!Client to follow.

I keep putting off starting work for Utah!Co because I feel like I don’t have time while I have all of these other projects, and I need to get in the groove of doing work for them – if nothing else, my one year on unemployment is March 20th, & while the fact that I’ve been partially working for the last year means I should be able to get another extension without any problem, I really just don’t want to have to do that. And to accomplish that, I need to create a steady stream of work to supplement the fact that most of my clients work on a project basis & thus are not chronologically dependable income. However, on the note of trying to set manageable goals for myself, this upcoming week’s benchmark is to complete their tutorials and just complete one or two simple jobs from their task board to use as test cases of their system & billing procedures. Here goes nothin’.

Discovered last night why Fitness!Client hasn’t answered my emails in regards to them not paying their bill — seems that someone else has taken over the company. Not quite sure what happened there, but have sent the new manager (who I’ve met a couple times) an email asking for a meeting to bring them up to date on the site. Even if all I do is hand over files & get paid the balance of the account, that works for me. I’d rather finish their site & launch it, ’cause it’s a good site, but eh :shrug: sometimes you take what you can get.

Let there be light
One thing that’s going forward is fixing things in my apartment. Over the last few months, the lights have slowly been failing – it’s an old building, and I think the ceiling fans might be only slightly younger than… me. My landlord will reimburse me off my rent of course, but he’s a bit cheap, so I can’t just go out & arbitrarily buy whatever, else he’ll insist on fixtures of his choosing, which would just be… bad. So I’ve been shopping for fixtures the way I’d shop if I owned the place – stuff that’s on sale & doesn’t suck. IKEA won the battle for ceiling lights & a wall sconce, but failed for ceiling fans on an epic scale.
After looking at Home Depot, Osh, & a bunch of other hardware places & deciding I didn’t like any of them, I found fans that I liked which weren’t going to cost my firsborn… in the hardware store across the street from my apartment. (Next time, need to look there first. Go team me.) Finally having the cash, I ordered them on Thursday & was lucky enough that they came in on Friday. As a bonus, when I picked them up this morning, I discovered they were actually $10 cheaper than the price listed in the catalog, which should make my landlord happy as well.

The upshot of this being that next Saturday I shall take the day off Dollwork to stay home while an electrician comes in & changes out all of the lights in my apartment. I’m also hoping that we’ll be able to get a plasterer in – last fall’s rain revealed a leak in the apartment above me, so I have two walls that need to be fixed due to water damage. I’m borrowing ZenMistressE‘s steam cleaner, since I figure at that point I’m going to have to move my bed & the couches so the guys can work, so I might as well just kill a crapload of birds in unison & also steam clean my mattress & couches at the same time. (I have hardwood floors with no rugs, so that’s one less thing.)

Good timing on all that as well, since there are a small cadre of Bronzers coming to town President’s Day Weekend. For me, having Bronzers about is the internet equivalent of a high school reunion, and since Polgara & I are pretty much the designated places to crash, much like any high school reunion I can’t help but want my apartment to look decent as part of showing that the years haven’t touched me a bit. ;)

Holy schneikes, where did you all come from?
Somehow, over the last few weeks, I’ve turned around to discover I have a crapload of rowers on my team. They just bloody well fell out of the sky, it would appear. Crew Classic is fast approaching, and thankfully it’s beginning to look like I won’t have to double up races – I mean, just because I can do two 2k races in one day that Sunday doesn’t mean I want to. I called a meeting with my coaches for tomorrow since it’s all happened rather fast & I think right now I’m the only one that actually knows what’s going on — as I said to the others, “I think that the knowledge should be somewhere other than in my head, since let’s face it – my head doesn’t always work!”

Okies. Time to go meander my way up Laurel Canyon for a bit. 20 cars with a shuttle, a TC & 3 valets — in Dollspeak, that means “Small party with unavoidably messed up semantics”… oy. Hopefully, they tip well.

Music: Not Myself – John MayerJohn Mayer - Room for Squares - Not Myself

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