Please friend me on that one and read about my wonderous misadventures in the city of Portland! Or possibly just my random brain drippings as I sit bored at my desk late into the night. Either way.
Just wanted to let everyone know I have a new cell number, since the video screen on my old cell phone died and it seemed like a good time to upgrade the ol' POS.
The new number is (281) 995-6598. I've got free incoming calls, too, so feel free to call away!
I know it's been freakin' forever since I've updated my livejournal, but Liz found a cool meme and I have to participate.
Step 1: Put your iTunes or equivalent on random. Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that come up, no matter how embarrassing. (Also, skip past instrumental songs, because "dooo dooo doooooooo" are not lyrics.) Step 3: Bold the songs when someone guesses correctly.
1) What will we do with a drunken sailor? 2) Old Godzilla was hoppin' around / Tokyo City like a big playground 3) Something told me to tell you / not to tell me what to do 4) Yeah, once I was a boogie singer / playin' in a rock and roll band 5) Dark in the city, night is a wire / Steam in the subway, earth is a fire 6) Well I been watchin' / While you been coughin' / I been drinkin' life / While you been nausous 7) As he came into the window / Was the sound of a crescendo 8) I've got a monster in my closet / Someone's underneath my bed 9) All simple monkeys with alien babies / amphetamines for boys, crucifixes for ladies 10) How often is someone concerned with the tiniest thread of your life? 11) Who are you to wave your finger? / You must have been out of your head 12) Lashing out the action, returning the reaction / Weak are ripped and torn away 13) When first I come to Liverpool / I went upon a spree 14) Back down / and touch / the door is shut / in the end 15) Sad voices, they're calling / A precious girl, she can't be gone 16) You wanted power and you begged for fame / You wanted everything the easy way 17) I would walk ten miles / on my hands and knees 18) If heartaches brought fame / In love's crazy game 19) Dance your cares away! / Worries for another day! 20) You're all that I have and you're all that I need / Each and every day I pray to get to know you please
Well, today was yet another day of being on call at the eye bank and not getting a single goddamned case.
For the first few months of my recovery tech job, my cases were coming in fairly regularly. I was averaging about five a week, which, considering the generous recovery fee, meant that I built up a nice little surplus in my bank account. And thank god, too, because for the entire month of October I've gone on maybe two or three cases a week. This means less hourly pay and fewer recovery bonuses, which sucks. I'm hoping the month of November turns out better, because I really like the idea of a disposable income.
The thing is, I'm basically working the same number of shifts, but for whatever reason, I'm not getting the cases. Corneas keep coming in, but the other techs are getting them. I know a lot of it falls to chance, such as whenever the family of the donor has the time to actually go through the consenting process, but I still find it frustrating.
There should be a full time donor coordinator position opening up as soon as one of the current donor coordinators gets his nursing certificate and goes to work for a hospital somewhere, and I'm gonna try for his spot. It means a steady income of more then I'm making currently per week, plus health insurance and, I think, dental. The downside is that the shift I'd be filling is Monday to Friday, 11pm to 7am. Yep, I'd be working the night shift. I'm not worried about adjusting to working at night, I'm just concerned as to how this would change my life in general. Ah well, lots of things to think about.
Grrr, what's a man gotta do to cut the eyes out of some corpse's head!?!
6:30 - Liz and I leave apartment with foldy chairs for the Houston Taiko Drum Festival at Herman Park. 6:40 - Purchase of fried chicken bucket, sides, and biscuits from local Kentucky Fried Chicken. 6:50 - Realize I can't turn onto Westheimer from Shepard, drive instead to Sunset and take that. 7:05 - Arrive at park amidst crowd of fellow attendees. 7:08 - Hike up to the outdoor theatre and set up our chairs while warily eyeing huge storm on horizon. 7:10 - Proceed to eat chicken while becoming increasingly aware of lots and lots of approaching lightning. 7:15 - Begin eating second drumstick while Liz and I debate leaving to avoid Biblical storm of doom. 7:20 - Am finally persuaded to pack it up. 7:21 - Struggle sadly with repacking foldy chairs into their stupidly-designed carrying sacks. 7:23 - Hike back down hill to car along with ever-increasing tide of fleeing attendees. 7:26 - Inform group of arriving attendees that the covered seating is full, much to their chagrin. 7:30 - Get into truck just as rain starts, prompting awe at rain-predicting powers of my girlfriend. 7:35 - Drive back to apartment in the midst of hellish deluge of ridiculous proportions.
Then I drank a diet Barq's and bought car insurance.
Thankfully tomorrow the fun part of this trip commences, what with the natural history museum and barbeque and community theatre and boating and whatnot.
So, since I'm bored and need a distraction from tearing up my mother's garden and covering the whole mess with sand and paving stones, it's time to play another round of...
ASK ME ANYTHING!
Seriously, ask me anything. Nothing is off limits. If you want to post anonymously, feel free to do so. I'll still answer. I promise I'll answer any question asked.
I'm heading to the airport in a little over two hours to catch a flight back to Florida for the week. Haven't been home since Christmas, so it's about time to visit the folks again and see how the ol' homestead(s) are holding up.
I'll be stuck with dialup internet until I get back into Houston next Sunday, so if you need to reach me, call my cell. Otherwise, I shall talk to you all when I return.
Gah, it's two in the morning, I have to be at the eye bank in five hours, and I cannot get tired enough to go to sleep.
As I look over at the bookcase across from me, I realize that I actually have a hobby: collecting gaming books. Two shelves are filled with sundry sourcebooks and supplements that I have acquired over the years. My collection used to be larger, but I was stupid a few years back and sold a significant number of my books to Half-Price for reasons I can no longer remember. That is something I'm never going to make the mistake of doing again. From now on, if I buy a gaming book, I'm keeping it.
I say that I collect gaming books because, the fact is, the vast majority of systems I own I have no intention of ever playing. Either the rules are just broken or I can't think of an excuse for organizing a game around that system, but either way, I'm never going to play it. The majority of books I own are from obscure little companies, or were popular fifteen years ago but are long since out of print. Things like Cyberpunk 2020, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Space 1889, and the like. I cannibalize ideas out of the books for use in games I do run, and to fuel my own over-active imagination as I lay in bed at night thinking about "what-if", but I'm sad to say that most of these games will never a campagin.
Regardless, though, I'm pleased to discover that I actually have a hobby collecting things. Maybe in twenty years I'll be featured on an obscure television documentary about roleplaying games as the "token common citizen with an overly large collection of some mundane object like eggbeaters".
On an unrelated note, I went to the Galleria with Liz tonight to pick up my contact lenses and walked out with a cd of songs about cats as sung by Garrison Keillor. That's right, I left a trendy upscale mall with: - Prescription eyewear for my terrible vision - A CD of original songs about cats, sung by the host of Prairie Home Companion. I think this officially makes me the biggest nerd/dork in the entire world. Someone buy me a pocket protector.
So, last night my mother left me a voicemail message informing me that Aunt Barbara, a relative of mine on my mom's side of the family, was arrested yesterday following a months-long sting operation that caught her embezzling over $250,000 from the North Carolina state goverment.
I've finally got a white collar felon in my family! Take that, uncle who once drunkenly punched a cop!
I know I haven't updated my journal in over a month, but today I witnessed something that demands to be shared.
Earlier this afternoon I was on my way north up to Conroe to recover on a case. I'm driving up I-45 out of the city, passing through Houston Heights. The interstate is spanned there in numerous places by pedestrian walkways. On one of these walkways I witnessed something completely unexplainable.
Thirty Elvis impersonators.
With guitars.
Playing music for traffic.
I kid you not. There were about thirty completely decked-out Elvis impersonators, all standing in a row on this pedestrian walkway, facing traffic and strumming their guitars. I had to slow down and do a double take just to register what I was seeing. I saw some cars swerve as their drivers craned their necks upward, attempting to make sense of this surreal sight.
- This afternoon I won a $25 gift card to Chili's at the eye bank monthly technical staff meeting. Hooray for free food!
- This afternoon I also managed to pick up both the Complete Adventurer and the Complete Warrior (both incredibly nerdy DnD books, both $30 retail) for twenty bucks combined at Half Price Books. Hooray for cheap gaming books!
- This morning I discovered that my residual payment for The Santa Clause and Homeward Bound came in the mail, which added up to over $1700 dollars. Hooray for effortless money!
Life is going pretty well for me and Liz. For those that don't know, I'm holding down two jobs now: archaeological lab assistant and eye bank recovery technician.
My archaeology job is going fine, though I've rapidly discovered that the work is incredibly boring. Basically what I'm doing is taking all archaeological research done by the assorted firms that work in and around Harris county and compiling them into a giant database with a corresponding GIS map. The idea is to create a tool that will prevent one firm from going out and doing unnecessary research on a site that was already surveyed five or ten years earlier. Thankfully the pay is good, and I'm tempted with the carrot on the stick of possible field work in the near future, so I'm sticking with that. Also, I get to amuse myself with three of the dumbest cats I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I love my lab cats!
The eye bank job is going stunningly. I've been training for about a month now, and I'm supposed to have my exit interview and evaluation next week so I can be released to actually do transplantable recoveries as opposed to research cases. The work is somewhat gruesome, and in my month there I've seen some incredibly unpleasant things at the medical examiner's office where we do most of our work. Thankfully, I've discovered that I have a surprisingly strong stomach, and so far nothing I've seen has caused me to turn green or pass out. I'm excited about finally being released, because it means alot more money for me. The way it works, I currently get hourly pay for training, which isn't too terribly much. However, when I start doing cases, I get a $75 bonus for every successful recovery (successful meaning that the cornea is deemed suitable for transplant) on top of my hourly rate, plus mileage. Given that you usually pull one or two cases a shift, and I'll be working four shifts a week, that's not a bad chunk of money.
I'm currently playing in two DnD games, and I'm gearing up to run a Serenity rpg for a bunch of the people still in town. Yeah, I know, I'm a nerd.
Also, I'm discovering I can cook! I feel so domestic!
That's all I feel like writing now. I need to go clean up the kitchen and check on my laundry. I hate having to pay for laundry now. Stupid quarters...
frustrated
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