Derailed By A Netbook

Can you believe that this morning I was actually considering being able to fly out to LA next month for one night just to see Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster?

Not anymore.

See, at 5:15 PM today I was working on my Netbook when it froze. So I hit the power button, expecting to restart it. No dice. It refused to boot. I took it to Dad, who messed around with it and concluded that it wouldn’t boot.

I, however, need a laptop on which to work. No laptop = no work = no money. And we all know what no money means, especially in this economy.

So off I went to Best Buy, looking for the cheapest laptop I could find. I ended up with a Toshiba Satellite C655. Aside from being several times larger than my conveniently-sized Netbook, it has a CD/DVD drive. And a shiny new screen with a pretty new pink Hello Kitty background.

Yes, I like Hello Kitty. I’m a girl. Get over it.

But that laptop cost me around $400.::sigh::

Here’s the hoping it lives a good long life.

“They’ll Buy You A Life”

Don’t live your life like you’re the only one in it
don’t waste another minute
thinking about yourself.
Open up and throw back all your covers
your sisters and your brothers
they’ll buy you a life.

In the interest of giving credit where it’s due, this song is called “Buy You A Life” and comes from the Young Dubliners’ “Saints and Sinners” album.

I’m making more money now. Not enough money to live on my own, but more than previously.

I used to think that there were things in life that were more important than money, but since I’ve moved back to the US, I’ve come to realize that money IS everything. You can’t do anything in this country without it. You can’t even properly take care of your health without it here.

Is it a sad day when I burn with envy for Canadians?

Life is still limited. I still don’t leave my room much. I still watch lots of Criminal Minds and read lots of fanfiction. If I were in NYC, I would be out occupying Wall Street with all of the 99% disenfranchised poor-to-average Americans.

Come February, however, I’m actually going on JocoCruiseCrazy2. There are lots of people going on this cruise, including Paul and Storm whom I’ve known for a long time (you should see their new iPad merch system!) and Paul F. Tompkins, a comedian who is a friend of Paget Brewster. No, I’m not going to be the squee-ing fangirl who asks him loads of questions about her. I’m not 16 anymore. I can’t admit to not being intrigued, however.

There are a bunch of other performers, but I really don’t know anything about them.

I just want out of the country.

I Guess I Should Update This Thing, Huh?

Seeing as I’m going to be dealing with blogging and social media soon professionally, maybe I should get back into personal blogging?

But for now, I have a zumba class to get to. More later.

“Just Don’t Be”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that phrase over the last 16 months. The worst is when people who have jobs – careers, yet – tell you that shouldn’t be angry/depressed/hopeless/whatever. What right do they have? They have everything I want! They are the symbol of everything that I am starting to despair of ever having.

I feel completely alone. I feel worthless. I feel like all of the things that I dream about (a career, a place of my own, my own decor/style) will never happen to me. After you’ve been unemployed for a certain amount of time, the chances that you will ever be hired again in America are slim. And I am 29 years old and have never been hired, period; at least, not for a real job. Retail jobs aren’t real because they don’t lead anywhere in life. Plus, they don’t pay enough for anyone to live independently.

But I have to say that I am *really* SICK TO DEATH* of hearing that I shouldn’t be depressed or upset or angry or  discouraged. Wouldn’t you be? Don’t you think that if you have it all, you should maybe stop telling someone who doesn’t, who already feels inferior to you, that she shouldn’t feel the way she does? Don’t you think this is insulting?

I lost the person who was my best friend because of this. She got tired of waiting me for to become equal to her and yelled at me and called me a loser. In the process, she also demonstrated that she has no grasp of the ins-and-outs of the debate over health care, but that’s another story. (Quick note to people: if you don’t want to be called a conservative, don’t spout conservative propaganda).

I stay awake most nights almost until dawn because I’m too sad to sleep. I crave living on my own, and I crave feeling like a person; like a human who exists outside of a function of someone else. Yet, I have no power. I’m tired of being told to keep applying for jobs, because all I get from that is silence. I’m convinced that someone is going to have to step in and pull some strings and that is the only way that someone will hire me. Yet, I also feel like the people I know look through me; as GrooveLily wrote: “People look right through me when I try and stop them/this cold and lonely girl is not their problem.”

 

Tribute to Paget Brewster

I love Criminal Minds and I love Paget Brewster’s Emily Prentiss. Here’s why.

She’s a badass. She carries a gun (though I’m not a gun-lover) and she is rarely thrown by anything. She is the female glue that keeps that team together; when they let their tempers get the better of them, she’s the one that pulls them back.

At the same time, she’s much warmer and gentler than Elle was, in my humble opinion.

She’s the daughter of diplomats and she speaks multiple languages. I can relate to this, as my grandfather was a diplomat and many people in my maternal family speak multiple languages as well (though I’ve got the most of all of them).

On top of that, we have similar coloring (hair, skin) and that’s cool.

She’s exactly the kind of woman I always wanted to be.

As for what I’ve heard about Paget herself, it sounds to me like she’s the kind of person everyone loves. And that’s really cool, too. I haven’t met her, so I’m going on hearsay, but all hearsay sounds the same.

This is her last day on set, and after several years on Criminal Minds, she will be sorely missed by thousands of people all over the world.

This sucks.

Valentine’s Day: The Other Black Friday

I don’t like Valentine’s Day. When I lived in Israel, February 14 was just another day, so I didn’t have to worry about it. There is an Israeli Valentine’s Day, but I could ignore it because it doesn’t receive anywhere near the hype that its American counterpart gets.

First, I’m not a red-roses kind of girl. I find red roses to be too traditional; too conventional. I think that anyone who buys their significant other red roses lacks creativity. Receiving red roses would not make an impression on me.

However, if those roses were in some other, more unusual color, like, say -royal blue – THEN I might notice. Any other non-traditional or tropical flower would catch my attention, too. Lilies are good. So are irises or freesia. Birds of paradise are great.

But red roses are just boring. I hereby declare them over – as if I had any right to declare anything of the sort.

Second, I don’t believe in relationships. I, as a woman, do not want to spend the rest of my life obeying a man. I do not want to be property. I do not want to be a servant. And that is what women are when we involve ourselves with men. I simply can’t condone it.

 

Time Spent

You know what I do with my time? I write articles, I apply to jobs that I don’t get, and I go to the gym. That’s it. If I’m not at the gym at night, I’m at home, in my room behind a locked door trying to avoid the large amounts of PBS and Poirot on the TV upstairs. This is what I do virtually every night.

The highlight of my week? My three-hour 9-AM-on-Saturday Arabic class.

I’m so not kidding.

I just found out that a certain former friend of mine is engaged (yeah, I get curious every now and then). Another friend got married last summer, and another is currently engaged and planning a wedding.

And I can’t even get a job and a place of my own. In two months, I’ll be 29 years old.

There are a lot of things I can do. I’m good at a variety of fields, I’m never late, I’m almost neurotically organized and I speak multiple languages.

So why do I feel like such a loser?

 

 

10 PM Wednesday Night

My interview was 2.5 weeks ago. I was told they would finish interviewing exactly a week ago. I haven’t heard anything – I’m not sure what that means, and I don’t want to give up just yet.

Moving on.

I’ve been good for the last few weeks; I cut out the junk I was eating, I quit drinking Dr. Pepper in favor of water and I got a bunch of fruits and vegetables and yogurt to eat for snacks. And I went to the gym almost every day. It feels really good. I want to be skinny…I really want to be skinny…

Aside from that, Paget Brewster’s makeup artist (from Criminal Minds) got on Twitter and gave us a list of products that they use on her face. Sadly, most of them are MAC and are quite expensive. I went to MAC the other day and tried on the “Fast Play” lip color (AFTER they doused the tube in sanitizer) and I LOVED IT.

So I bought one. Just one. And I’m hooked; the stuff is great. I see why Paget likes this color. It looks good on people like us who have light skin and dark hair. I would collect these lip colors if they weren’t $15 each. Or maybe slowly; you know, one by one, one a week or one every two weeks. 🙂

For Egypt

Tomorrow I’m going to wear my ankh necklace, in the honor of the people of Egypt. I’m going to wear it, even though I often get mistaken for a Christian when I wear it (because it looks like a cross, even though it is covered in heiroglyphs).

Like everyone else, I am watching and hoping for the people of Egypt. I have old friends there, sisters, and I wonder if they have joined the protests. I wonder what they think. I wonder what their father, who lives here in the U.S, is thinking.

Now, this will all end in one of three ways:

1. Mubarak will ultimately step down and be replaced by someone, perhaps al-Baradei, who will slowly transition Egypt into a democratic state.

2. Mubarak will ultimately step down and be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, in which case, Egypt will transition into a theocracy reminiscent of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979.

3. Mubarak will hold on, ultimately crush the protests, and things will go back to the way they were.

One quick caveat I would like to add: everyone seems to love theorizing on how the outcome of Egypt will affect Israel. I’ve heard people say that if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power, they will revoke the peace treaty, and we will return to a permanent state of war.

Here’s my problem with that: though it is possible, and maybe even probable, the millions of dollars that Egypt receives in aid money from the United States (second only to the amount that Israel receives) was contingent on that peace treaty. Sadat held it up as the compromise that he was willing to make in order to get that aid money.

Should the Muslim Brotherhood take over, Egypt would likely lose that aid. Given that one of the central issues for the current protesters is the lack of jobs and thus, decent lives, I think that the loss of that aid will be a hard sell to the Egyptian public…

 

 

The Interview

I was a good girl. I got up at 8. I went to the gym. I came home, showered, got dressed and left early to make sure that I made it to the interview on time. I sat in a Starbucks to keep warm for the 1.5 hours between getting off the train and getting to the interview.

The first problem involved the stairs. See, I don’t like elevators. I don’t like the whole tiny, windowless moving box thing. I’m not very good at flying, either. However, I know that I might suffer serious psychological damage if I ever got stuck in an elevator…especially if I got stuck in an elevator alone. So I avoid elevators. I was perfectly happy to walk up to the 6th floor. I’m 28, I’m strong, I can walk (and run, and dance!) in heels, so why not?

Except that the doors to each floor are locked from the stairwell. You can walk DOWN to the first floor, but not up to any other floor. I found this out AFTER the desk attendant in the lobby went up the company and got their receptionist to come downstairs for me. I thought I was just getting a key to the 6th floor door. If I had known THAT was the plan, I would just have darted into an elevator with other people. I explained this to the receptionist, and I hope that she didn’t tell anyone else.

I’m kind of paranoid. I’m sure that people are always looking for ways to discriminate against other people. I was sure that any little thing that I did during this interview would disqualify me. Never mind education. Never mind languages. Never mind ability. Someone who is shy and nervous around people will never succeed because to be shy is un-American. Americans must be confident and aggressive to succeed. Most people can do confidence for themselves, but I cannot. I need to see proof from other people that I deserve it.

So I did the interview. I answered the questions as best I could, but I don’t know if they believed me. I took the test and it was easy. But I was nervous. I was playing with my ring and with my scarf and I kept one arm across my chest most of the time (for fear that the scarf would part and the fact that my top was fairly low-cut would not show). They asked me questions about professional experiences and since I have none, I had to answer as best I could. They asked a lot of questions about interpersonal communications. Ummm….I can handle people. I can. I’m just a loner type. A loner type that is hurt by most things that people say and do. A loner type that has no personal support.

They’re interviewing until next week. If they want to see me again, they’ll call for a second interview. That means that there is competition. This is a very bad sign. I don’t win competitions. I don’t get chosen over other people.