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Type O Negative - “Red Water”

I got the job! :grin:

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I received an email this morning asking me to come in for another interview on Monday. EEK! I was, um, apparently right about it going well - they want me to meet their executive team (!).

Ben Folds Five - “Selfless, Cold, and Composed”

I had a job interview today.

Like, a real-life, career-type job. One that I would really, really like to get. The job description is exactly what I want to do - the official title is Production Artist, but it basically involves the actual building out of websites (and HTML emails) using web standards. I was freakishly nervous all day today but I think the interview went well. We seemed to get along nicely, they have a great sense of humor, and I know three of the people that work there already. I don’t want to say too much and jinx myself, but I’m optimistic about it.

Sadly, I wore bad shoes to walk to the interview, so I have horrible blisters on the bottoms of both my feet. Yeah. The bottoms. It hurts to stand, and I feel really stupid that I didn’t just wear normal shoes to walk there and then change into my nice shoes. Bad plan, that one.

My shoulder is also super sore from carrying my bag around. I do this all the time, but for some reason today it decided it didn’t like carrying my bag and so I hurt.

I got ready for my interview at school, and I had several people tell me I looked “sharp,” so I think I dressed pretty well. I had a black suit-jacket type thing, black pants, and a camisole with black, red and pink on it to go under the jacket. I think black sometimes isn’t recommended for interviews because you look “severe” or too serious, but I dunno… I thought it looked nice. People look good in black.

So! To conclude, I probably will not talk too much more about the whole job thing, suffice to say that it went well and I’m terribly proud of myself for just trying. It was a huge step for me.

Lacrimas Profundere - “My Velvet Little Darkness”

Someone posed this question on another site I read, and I was interested in discussing it here: Is your mental image of yourself better, about accurate, or worse than the truth?

I think my mental image of myself is better than the truth. I apparently still envision myself looking like I did when I was fifteen and weighed barely over a hundred pounds. My driver’s license said 108 for the longest time, to the point where I was embarrassed when people looked at it because I in no way weighed 108 any longer. My current driver’s license claims I weigh about 12 pounds less than I actually do. (Hence the running, of course.)

I know a lot of women look in the mirror and imagine themselves much heavier, or with more cellulite, or with less muscle. I look in the mirror and am shocked to see a shadow under my tummy, dimples on my thighs, a double chin. It’s disconcerting. I also imagine my boobs to be much more, um, proportionate with my body than they actually are. In reality, they’re outrageous, and I haven’t yet figured out how to dress so they don’t look as such. In short, buxom would be a good word to describe me. I’ve always been curvy, I suppose, but now I’m a bit more so and my brain seems to be in denial.

So how about you? Is your image accurate? Why or why not?

You will totally not guess what I just did.

(more…)

Moulin Rouge DVD

I’ve been doing a bit of research into time management, as it’s one of the areas in which I feel I lack. So far, lots of websites have suggested designating a specific study area or work area in which there are minimal distractions. Find a place with good lighting and low noise. Work during your personal best working time (if you’re a morning person, work in the morning - don’t fight your circadian rhythm.) If you’re in a computer room, turn off the computer.

Most of these suggestions are perfectly reasonable. I understand them, and they make sense. But what about those of us who require a computer to do their studying/homework/work? Let’s say I’m currently in a design class. I have to do designs. Most of these begin (or should begin) as sketches with a pen or pencil and paper, but at some point, they really do need to move onto the computer in the form of mockups. This is impossible if the computer is off, but also difficult if the computer is on and you’re like me and you open Photoshop only to have it take a while to load, so you start reading a blog, and then you discover a new one that’s witty or insightful or has the cutest bunnies ever and you forget why you opened Photoshop in the first place because, OMG THE BUNNIES. And then you open up your Wordpress “Write Post” page because you have to tell Teh Internets about THE BUNNIES. And then you remember that you have to pay the electric bill, so you do that online, but then you think, “Gee, I hope I have enough money to cover that and some groceries” so you check your online banking, and thank god, you do, and… what? Photoshop?

Ratatat - “Everest”

As many of you know, I am not terribly prone to dressing in girly clothes and as such, I have a dilemma. I found a bunch of cute clothes at thrift stores recently, some of which I am planning on wearing to our friend’s upcoming wedding, except I have absolutely no shoes to wear with the outfit. None.

I am thinking maybe some brown ballet flats? I’m really only willing to spend about $20 on them though, so that narrows my choices a bit. I found some okay ones at Target, but the reviews are terrifying and they don’t have my size - they’ve got 6.5 and 7.5, but no 7s. I would rather not resort to my black Teva flip-flops, but I may be out of luck.

Any suggestions?

Tiamat - “Love In Chains”

Okay, hypothetical situation:

You are currently a student at a design school. The workload is quite large, and you frequently feel overwhelmed with everything you have to do in the little time you have to do it in. In the coming term you are going to be graduating, which means stressful things like creating your portfolio, working out your identity/branding and collateral (business cards, letterheads, etc.), and preparing for the “real” world, not to mention the actual work in the rest of your classes. You already work part-time and will be registered for four classes (!) that term (many people try to keep it to only two or three). Just recently, you have received an offer to intern at a well-known design agency.

Several people you went to school with and consider friends work at Well-Known Design Agency, some of whom interned there to begin with. It would be a paid internship, with the possibility of it turning into a full-time job upon graduation (or even prior to graduation).

However, Well-Known Design Agency is located 60 miles from where you currently live, and you do not have a car. You could probably scrape up some money for a crap one, but you’d also have to think about parking issues/costs, gas, car maintenance (especially if it is sort of crap to begin with), licensing, and possibly even insurance for your significant other because he/she is not currently insured to drive.

Do you:

A) Take the internship. A chance like this doesn’t come very often. Figure that you’ll either buy a car or try to locate someone in the city who won’t kill you/rape you/kidnap you to carpool with. You’ll also force yourself to become great at time management and great at maintaining your own mental stability in the midst of all of this.

B) Take the internship, but know in your heart that you’ll end up stretching yourself thin for the next term, doing poorly in school, and generally feeling awful mentally. Though, might the job be worth having three awful months in a row?

C) Turn down the internship knowing that you, at this time in your life, would not be able to hack it with your current job, school workload, and the commute issue. Figure something better (ie., closer) will come along.

D) Turn down the internship, but regret it later because it was a wonderful opportunity that you passed by. Hate self forever; become someone who LIVES in a VAN down by the RIVER.

Please comment and let me know what you would do. Feel free to offer alternatives.

Type O Negative - “Der Untermensch”

I hate not having anything to talk about. I sometimes feel like my website is a testament to how boring my life really is - other people go out and do things, and I… I do homework, play on the Internet, watch movies, and sometimes knit. I am okay with the fact that I am an introvert, I just wish I had some interesting development going on in my life that I could fall back on if need be.

I think that’s why blogs are so popular - people generally have things going on in their lives that develop slowly over a period of time and we’re all waiting with bated breath to find out what happens next. This is especially true of blogs by pregnant ladies, but also for those people who are in the process of buying a house, or people who are planning a wedding, or people raising children. There is always something to look forward to.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be a part of any of those things. I’d love to have something to be excited about. I suppose I have my impending graduation (mid-December OMG panic) to discuss, but really? I think it’s boring. I make a portfolio website (which, yes, I will probably share here. I’m still a bit weirded out about putting my last name on the Intarwebs, but it’s around if you look for it so I guess it’s not a huge deal), I do the portfolio show (lots of standing around and talking about yourself), I walk, and then it’s over. Yeah, the buildup was three years coming, but it feels so anti-climactic. I’ll be done with school, but I’m not excited about that. I’m looking forward to a bit of an extended vacation where I can visit home and just hang out and knit and maybe embroider some fat-headed birds onto pillowcases, but that’s what I’m looking forward to. It’s not the graduation or the being done with school thing. I’d love to continue taking classes (as long as they don’t ruin my life, which they have had a tendency to do recently), especially trying out some German classes or something. I’m certainly not looking forward to working, that’s for sure.

I know my time will come, eventually. It’s the “eventually” part I’m having an issue with at the moment.

Therion - “Melek Taus”

Daniel and I were watching Gladiator tonight (during dinner. I do not recommended it as a dinner movie) and I realized something: I really miss being in band.

We’d occasionally play movie themes, and we once did a Gladiator soundtrack medley. Every time I watch the movie, it brings back memories of sitting in my row with my French Horn doing my best to hold my own. There were only ever three of us French Horn girls, one who was my best friend at the time and the other who was a sweet girl named Heather. All of us were self-taught, former flute players who defected to the brass section because it was way cooler and far more fun.

I think part of the reason French Horn was so fun was because it always seemed like us versus the rest of the band. Most of the time (especially senior year) there was only two of us, and many of the parts were French Horn only (typically whole sections play certain parts, like flutes with clarinets or trumpets with trombones, etc.) so we really had to try to be heard. The instructors argument was for us to be louder - our argument was that we were playing at the absolute top of our lungs and the rest of the goddamned band could afford to be quieter. We usually won. It sounds stupid, but since we were almost exclusively self-taught and our section was so small, I think we felt like renegades. We were always fighting to do well, always fighting to be heard.

Several songs we played had excruciatingly important French Horn solos or near solos. The most famous was Greensleeves, which was tradition to play for the Christmas concert. The first note of that particular rendition was a high D, not impossible to hit, but pretty difficult as a first note with nothing preceeding it, and it was only the French Horn playing - the entire rest of the band was silent for several measures. The first time we played Greensleeves for the Christmas concert, someone else was first chair and took care of it for us. The second time, when that girl had graduated and moved on, I ended up crying afterward. I’m not normally that emotional over concerts, but on that particular occasion the drummers had their own little bit to play in between the last song and Greensleeves and since I had such a long break, I couldn’t visualize the note in my head to play it. French Horns are like that - I had to visualize what the note was going to sound like if I was ever going to be able to hit it. My friend and I were supposed to hit the same note at the same time and… we didn’t.

We both started. I think I initially missed the right note, hit a different, lower one, and then corrected it up to the right one. She may have started on the wrong note, I don’t know, but we both started and then she just dropped off. I think she felt she screwed up and couldn’t continue. I knew there couldn’t be silence so I just had to keep playing. The note was there, it was the correct note, but it sounded weak and I had to take a breath in the middle. I was SO. UPSET. It was my one chance to prove I didn’t suck, and, well, I didn’t prove anything. The beginning of the song is supposed to be majestic, yet sweet and pretty, and it was none of those things and it was our fault. We apologized in class. That’s how bad we felt.

The following year it was revealed we were going to play the song again and while I will admit that I was filled with dread, I vowed I wouldn’t screw it up. That year, I didn’t screw it up. I hit the note dead on and it was beautiful. I finally felt like I redeemed myself for the first go-round. I wish I had a recording of it. It’s still one of my favorite Christmas songs.

My other most memorable song to play (besides the songs I went to State playing) was a commissioned song called “Where Never Lark Nor Eagle Flew.” I have yet to find a recording of it other than the one we made when we played it for a competition, but it is wonderful. It is by far the most difficult thing I have ever played in my life. The French Horn part was obviously written for someone far better than I and the majority of it was a full octave higher than the stuff I usually played, which meant it was really, really hard. I loved it.

When I listen to that recording I can still pick out the parts we played. I know what notes we were supposed to hit and which ones we actually hit, where you could finally hear us over the rest of the band and we sound awesome. It’s so gratifying to successfully hit all the notes of your part; I can’t describe it very well. It’s like you know you’ve done a good job, you’re doing a good job, and everyone had damn well better be able to hear you. I still swell with pride a bit when I think of how well we did on that song. I used to listen to that recording at night to fall asleep sometimes. That sounds so dorky to me now, but I was so proud of how we did. I still am, really.

I’ve said this before, but I was sad when I graduated because I knew I’d have to give up playing. I never owned my own French Horn; I always used the school’s. Our instructor bought my friend and I our own, very nice mouthpieces to use instead of the crap standard issue ones, and always made sure our instruments were fixed. We took good care of them. I’m sure I could still re-string a valve if I had to. I’d love one of my own, but right now I’m not sure what I’d do with it if I had it. I’ve never liked playing on my own - I feel like I sound feeble and I much prefer my own sound when I’m part of a band.

Watching Gladiator tonight brought this all back. I wish I could be a part of it again.

Type O Negative - “Stay Out Of My Dreams”

Today I had to get up early after staying up late. My walk to school left me with blisters on the bottoms of my feet from my new shoes. I spent over eight hours in front of a computer screen only to walk home and sit down at the computer again to do homework.

Sitting there, I realized that I haven’t taken a good photo of myself in quite a while. I have a few favorites, but they’re all from over a year ago. The recent ones depict how I’ve felt recently - I’ve got purple shadows under my eyes, a perpetual blank look in my eyes that makes me seem lifeless or unanimated, like the spark has left. I’m not genuinely smiling. I was miserable in this photo and trying to fake like I wasn’t.

The photo on my MySpace profile (up until a minute ago) was from ages ago, and a friend recently asked if I had lost, like, thirty pounds or something because, WOW. It was meant to be a compliment, but as I was explaining that the photo was old, I just sort of stopped. I haven’t really gained or lost any weight since that photo was taken (maybe five pounds here or there - I don’t own a scale) - it’s just a great angle. But I got to thinking that I haven’t really taken any photos of myself that I’ve actually liked in a long, long time.

I grabbed my camera, stepped into the bathroom (best light in the apartment), and began shooting.

I finally got one I liked.

It made my day.

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All of a sudden there’s been this huge influx of people calling me “Megg.” Now, don’t get me wrong, under the right circumstances this is perfectly okay. Some examples:

1. My friend Jeremy accidentally referring to me as “Megg” since his sister’s name is Megan and that’s what he calls her.
2. Heidi and Meagan and other people I am close to referring to me as “Megg” because, well, we are close.
3. Asking my permission to call me “Megg”

However, there are a few circumstances in which it I feel it is not okay to arbitrarily shorten my name:
1. When I barely know you and you begin calling me that from day one as if that’s how I introduced myself
2. When I don’t like you
3. When you have previously been under fire for calling me another nickname I was uncomfortable with
4. When I just know that in your head, you are spelling it with one g and not two. (I’m only sort of joking.)

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, this is no big deal. But why would you just start shortening someone’s name as though that’s how they refer to themselves? I can see in the case of Jenn or Jem, because yes, they have full names and they do go by those sometimes, but the key here is they also refer to themselves by their abbreviated names. I almost never write “Megg” on anything. I can’t even recall if I’ve ever done it.

This arbitrary name-shortening thing happened at least three times today. Twice in person, once in writing. Seriously, what is going on?

Type O Negative - “Pyretta Blaze”

I’ve decided to post about my day today in semi-real time (a la Blurbomat). Here we go!

9:23am: Wake up. Stumble out of bed and play on the computer for a bit. Thank you all for your lovely birthday wishes!

9:54am: Have breakfast: Life cereal with plain soymilk. Daniel insisted on getting the plain kind the last time we were shopping and then compromised and let me get a vanilla one too, but the plain got opened first so I’m stuck with it. I just think it tastes too much like beans - at least the vanilla tries to taste good.

10:13am: Brother Paul and his girlfriend Caitlin call to sing happy birthday at me. Thanks, guys!

10:25am: Contemplate dream I had last night involving a train. I was late and going to miss it, so I yelled at people to hold the train for me while I ran back to my hotel room to grab my stuff. I started out going down instead of up on an escalator, and finally made it to my room on the fourth floor and back on the train.

10:36am: Put laundry in washing machine and begin doing dishes that accumulated since last night. Seriously, how does this happen? I hate dishes. Receive email from my friend Richard wishing me a happy birthday. His birthday was yesterday!

11:40am: Take shower. Yay for cleanliness!

12:15pm: Wonder what to do for the next five hours. Decide to shop online. Probably won’t buy anything.

1:00pm: Heidi calls, I eat lunch (freezer lasagne!).

2:07pm: Have no idea where the last hour went. Retrieved laundry from dryer at some point and gave up shopping online - everything is expensive. Expensive or really, really stupid. Decide to try to pixel things for Qbee.

2:55pm: Came up with this:

3:25pm: Heidi calls again. I play Animal Crossing for the first time in over a month, and all the characters are giving me presents because it’s my birthday! I got a birthday cake from my “mom” and a bunch of nice letters.

4:45pm: Daniel gets home from work early!

5:10pm: I get a weird phone call so I let the voicemail pick it up. Weird message I don’t understand… Something about Dan, or Ben, and Grand Avenue, some sort of delivery? A store? What is this guy talking about?

5:13pm: MY PARENTS SENT ME FLOWERS. This is the only time this has happened. Ever. :grin: The message was from the flower deliveryman, who couldn’t get into our building.

5:33pm: Get roped into doing some work.

6:40pm: Finish work, leave house to go to dinner. Have dinner at Henry’s Tavern - we had a pear, gorgonzola cheese, and candied walnut salad as an appetizer, and then I had a crazy huge sandwich (turkey, avocado, ham, bacon) and a Long Island Iced Tea and Daniel had a garlic and tomato pizza. The waitress had to check my ID and told me happy birthday, and then after dinner she brought out a complimentary scoop of vanilla bean ice cream with chocolate shavings on top complete with a lit candle. She was like, “We don’t sing, but… here! Enjoy!” It was great.

8:41pm: Peruse the shelves at Powell’s bookstore for quite some time. I get the 5th Harry Potter (the one I got on my birthday in 2003 lives at my parent’s house) for my upcoming train ride and consider getting some knitting books but ultimately decide to wait.

9:51pm: Finally call my family, as they have neglected to call me all day and I’m feeling a bit offended. I leave a message on their internet voicemail thing.

10:30pm: Daniel serves me a mini-pie from the café nearby and sings Happy Birthday and I blow out the candle. My phone rings - the family comes through! I talk to my dad for a bit, he asks about the flowers, I tell him about my day, he tells me my Uncle Doug suffered a stroke sometime around last Monday (a week ago, not three days ago) but seems to be recovering well. It doesn’t sound terribly serious (though, really, how great can a stroke be?) but there’s some learning-to-speak-again kind of stuff involved. Uncle Doug is probably the last person I would have guessed this would happen to. Dad and Landen are going to an out of town baseball game this weekend that happens to be in the same town Uncle Doug is recovering in, so they’re going to visit. I hope he recovers quickly.

11:07pm: I open my presents from Daniel. I got the DELICIOUS Satsuma Body Butter I wanted and Eddie Izzard’s Dress To Kill DVD! I seriously cannot emphasize how wonderful the satsuma stuff smells. It is beyond heavenly. Yum yum yum.

11:38pm: We put on the DVD and I wrap up this entry. Hope it wasn’t too boring; I’ll admit it’s more for me to remember this day by than for it to be a fabulously entertaining account of my life, but I still hope you are not lying dead on your floor because I’m so boring.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Jag Panzer - “Burning Heart”

First haircut in seven months.

I am SO happy with it. She thinned it out a ton in the back so that there’s not so much hair to deal with. She said, “Your hair is pretty thin, but there’s a TON of it. A lot.” Heh.

It’s so twirly and fun.

Borknagar - “The View of Everlast”

I just received an unexpected $146.25 in the mail. Totally, completely unexpected. It’s insurance-related (I was so relieved to see that it was a check, not a bill) but I had assumed the whole thing was over and done with since it started a year ago. So, yay! Money!

I still fit into a pair of pants I wore all the time last summer. :star:

It was a nice temperature outside today. Warm enough for a t-shirt but still not too hot in the sun, and breezy but not so breezy that it felt cold. Very nice.

My periodic table of elements project is coming along nicely. It’s not done (and, admittedly, probably won’t be done in time for the final) but all the functionality is there and it looks neat.

I did laundry so I have clothes to wear now.

I got a good night’s sleep last night.

My work schedule for next term is just what I wanted, so I’ll only have to be at the school Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays next term instead of every day, like this term.