Blogger's having some problems at present, so I'm typing this post up in Notepad. I'll paste it over when things are back to normal. Who knows when that'll be. Rah. For the record, the time is presently 11:18 AM.

Anyway, I'm working today at 5 PM, so I've got some time to kill before I have to go in... I'll probably leave between 2:30 and 3 and do a bit of browsing around the area shops before I don the BAM apron and the nametag of the retail slave. Not in the best of moods right now -- I guess this is always the case, but right now it's wearing on me that everyone else around me seems to be doing so much better than I am. (more...)

Yesterday was my first day of (paid) work since 2001... I am now an employee of Books-A-Million. First day wasn't too bad, but it's still retail. Oh, and it's a bookstore, so I saw quite a few things that really irritated me, not the least of which was seeing Oprah's name stamped all over Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, since apparently it's the latest title in her book club. You might think that's a good thing, since tons of people are reading the book just because Oprah recommended it, but also take into account that most of these people will get nothing out of the book (assuming there's something to be gotten out of the book, given its classic status; I haven't read it myself) because they're already mindless Oprah zombie-slaves. I remember when Oprah was pitching Steinbeck's East of Eden and she dedicated an episode of the show to "discussing" the book. (more...)

Already had 'em, but I made a few changes to the way they're working. Unfortunately, I was working with an older version of the comments template (apparently the latest version wasn't the one on my hard drive), so I unwittingly overwrote some of my later changes and had to try and do my best to recreate them. I may not have done so as well as I'd like, so if you notice anything drop a comment or send an e-mail and let me know. And I kicked up the comment maxlength quite a bit (since once or twice people have had problems with that), so you should be able to post some pretty long comments now. If you want. (more...)

Eventful day yesterday... I'd tell you about it, but I ran up enough photos to turn the day's events into a Scary-Crayon piece, so hopefully I'll have that written up in time for next week. But after that I had an interview of sorts at one of the U.S. PIRG offices, which went well enough, but unfortunately the hours of that office don't mesh too well with the public transportation schedule (hours are like 2PM-10PM; around here, buses stop running around 7PM). The guy who ran the office seemed to like me, though -- really nice guy; fellow Yale grad, too -- so he gave me the number of another office in D.C. with more viable hours. That could work, but I've got an interview for a part-time job at Books A Million on Wed, so I think I'll see how that goes fist. These last few days have been pretty exhausting, so I'll use tomorrow for downtime and to work on the next SC article (which I'll hopefully get up sometime later today; if not then, I'll shoot for Wednesday). It should be a fun one, so stay tuned...

And I've still got two slots left for the FIVE QUESTIONS GAME -- so far, Brent and De are confirmed players, and I think Sam's in too. So if you wanna play, leave a comment! Once I've got all of the players, I'll write up the questions and send 'em out. 🙂

Still need to blog about Angel, too... but not tonight. Ja for now!

Angel's still on the list of future blog topics, but for tonight's post I've answered Estella's five questions! Some other questions have also been answered...so I think I'm all caught up now on that front. Alrighty, HERE WE GO! (more...)