Updateroo

Around the time of my last post, I was looking into starting up my own business as an insurance agent. Also at that time, I got notification that my claim for unemployment insurance had been denied. Since I thought I was going to be doing the insurance thing, I let the UI slide.

But, the insurance thing fell through, and by the time that happened, it was too late to file an appeal to UI. So, I applied at a temporary manual labor place where I could work and get paid the same day.

The first job I had was only two hours long, and I was paid for four hours' work (since the minimum day at the temp company is four hours long, but the company I drove for needed a driver kind of ASAP). The second job, which I got the next day, was for a pharmaceutical company, and I was basically just sticking security stickers on boxes of medicine.

That job got me repeat tickets at the temp place for more than a week, and while I was there, they kept asking if I wanted to apply for a job there. The person who was in charge of all the people at the pharmaceutical company said that the position I'd be in would pay better than the minimum wage ($7.25/hour) I was getting from temp company--with no possibility of over-time pay--and I still had bills I needed to catch up on and would need to pay regularly come December, so I decided to go for it.

So now I work for the pharmaceutical company, and I'll get my first paycheck from them on Tuesday. I still have to pay my over-due cell phone bill (about $185), and apparently I have an outstanding tab at the Haven for $6.50, which I'll pay along with my December membership. I've also got the fee for the last couple of allergy shots I got before I no longer had health insurance to pay, and then I'll be all caught up.

I figured out a budget, based on whether or not I get overtime at the new job, and also based on how much overtime I get. The way I figure it (approximating 17% taken out for taxes), if I don't get any overtime at all, I won't be able to pay my portion of the rent, so I'll just take over the Dish, internet (Comcast), and power (Allegheny) bills entirely.

But the people at my new job won't let me not get overtime right now. I told them when I interviewed that I could work up to ten hours a day, thinking that they'd schedule me for eight hours a day and five days a week, and then if they needed me to stay a couple hours longer once or twice a week, I could do it, but then after I was hired, I learned that they expected me to actually work ten hours every day, for six days a week!

My first week, I was still at the temp company on Monday, but then Tuesday through Saturday I worked my tail off. By the time I left Saturday night (which was really very early Sunday morning) my back, feet and hips were killing me, and I was so stiff I could barely move. Darn concrete floors.

I'm still looking for a job which will pay better and have less hours, but it's going to be tricky going to interviews when I'm at my new job from either 12-10pm or 2pm-12am every day except Sunday, and if I'm not there (or at the Haven on Thursdays for Brian's game), it's either too late/early to go anywhere, or I'm sleeping off the previous day's work.

I'm looking into a mystery shopping opportunity, which I think I could do if I get up a couple hours early. Right now, I have a 7-day free trial of the mystery shopping job listing site, so I'll try it out for six days, hoping that it'll pay for itself (it's $49.95/month after the free trial). If it does, I'll do both for a while, then if the mystery shopping starts to pay off more than the job would, then I'll drop the job. If it doesn't pay for itself, then I'll drop the mystery shopping and keep looking for a better job than this one.

A couple of months ago, I submitted an application for a job at an airport and passed the assessment they had me take. They'd asked me to fax a couple of forms in for them to get more information, and I did, but apparently the number they had me fax it to before doesn't work right, so they didn't really get the forms. I got confirmation e-mails saying they'd received the forms, but they didn't really.

So I tried to re-send the forms to another fax number they gave me this weekend, but Dad's fax machine apparently can't send faxes to numbers which just forward the faxes on to different machines.

So yesterday, I scanned the forms and sent them through faxzero.com, and I hope they went through, because the cover pages that the organization gave me to put with the forms say that they have to be the first page in the transmission or else it may not work properly, but FaxZero adds a cover page onto the faxes you send through them if you want a free fax. I can't afford to send a fax that costs actual money.

On a different note, Jason and I went to the Haven on Black Friday. Jason played video games while I drew a picture of the character I play in Brian's Serenity game, Maekona Vaine. It turned out okay, I guess. I think I tend to do better when I don't have a picture to work from, but in my mind, Maekona's of Chinese-American descent, so I wanted to make sure her facial features reflected that and used a picture I'd found through Google Images as a reference point.

The shape of the drawing's face makes her look like an alien, the coloring isn't quite right for what I had in mind, and I had to scan it in two parts, so there's a really noticeable line right in the middle that I couldn't get rid of, but it's at least the basic idea of Maekona anyway:

I miss my cable TV . . .

We got our DSL startup kit on Thursday, but Verizon had forgotten to order a modem/wireless router for us, so we got the whole kit minus that. The modem is supposed to come today sometime, but we won't be able to hook it up until Verizon e-mails me to say that the service is set up and ready to be used.

I returned the cable modem to Comcast on Friday evening. Except for finding a way to get to the place in all the one-way traffic of downtown Frederick, it was a piece of cake. I had disconnected it on Thursday evening when I got home from work, so I didn't get to record Smallville, since the modem was what gave us our cable TV.

I spent practically the whole weekend at Mom & Dad's house. At 1:00pm on Saturday, Kayla and I went to the stake center to watch Jason's basketball game. We saw Anna there, and decided to meet her at her house after the game, since she had to go to the pet store and we had some more of Kayla's stuff in the car to take to the house.

We got to the house and met Anna's new puppy, Mandy, then I watched Psych with Dad. She's a beagle and fox hound mix, and she's so cute! If Bambi were a dog with beagle coloring, he'd look like Mandy. Seriously, her legs are so long, and her neck is too, but she's got a beagle's coloring and soft, floppy ears.

Anyway, Anna got back a little later with Jason, and all of us (minus Jason and Dad) decided to watch Buffy and Angel for a while. Around 10 or 11pm, Anna asks, "You guys want to stay over?" and since I was already thinking about it, we decided we were going to do just that. So Anna dragged out the air mattresses (Jason's twin-sized one and Kimba's full-sized one) and some blankets and pillows. She lent me a pair of pajama pants too.

Sometime during the late night hours, my dad decided that he was going to get rid of some of the books on the shelves in his den--including his entire Star Trek novel collection. He got rid of a few others (most of which I took--not the Star Trek) and rearranged what he had left to his liking.

Once we were all settled, we watched some more Buffy and Angel until about 2:30, when we decided to go to sleep. That's the first time I've slept in that house since I moved a little more than a year ago. The somewhat-strange part is, Anna's new room is my old room.

We woke up between 9 and 11 yesterday morning and had some breakfast all around. After the beds were put away (or at least stood up against a couple walls so they wouldn't get in the way of rambunctious dogs) we watched Smallville, and then some more Buffy and Angel. (Are you seeing a theme here?)

Around 3, I went home to take a shower and pick up Jenn after I set up the phones that Kayla had given us. We now have a phone in the kitchen, one in Jenn and Amit's room, one in the 2nd-floor common room, and one in my room. Turns out, I didn't need a phone jack in my room, because I can use the extension of the one in the common room.

The DirecTV guy came to the house last Friday morning. I wasn't there, but Jenn and Amit were. Apparently, the guy asked if there was a main TV, and Jenn and Amit weren't sure what to tell them, since Kayla is going to be moving soon and the main TV is going with her. So the guy installed the DirecTV receiver in Jenn and Amit's room. The dish is on the roof (back left corner), and it looks like the cable for it goes over the roof and down the front right side (tucked into the corner our building makes with the one next door), into the ground somewhere.

Since the receiver is hooked up to Jenn and Amit's TV, the rest of us still don't have any cable at the moment. I asked Dad if a splitter and amplifier after the receiver would work, but apparently it wouldn't. Everyone would be forced to watch whatever Jenn and Amit were watching, since the receiver only has one tuner. We've been trying to figure out where the cable comes into the house from the dish, so that we can split and amplify it to the rest of our TVs if we need to. If we can just plug into the jacks with satellite-ready TV's and VCR/DVD players, that would be great though (especially if we actually have satellite-ready equipment).

I'll have to look a little closer this evening when I get home from my allergy shots (and before I go across the street for the preliminary voting machine setup). I think there might be some sort of splitter in Stacie's room, or somewhere near where the cable looks like it ends.

Heck, I might even be looking at the wrong cable--it might just go through the roof into the attic crawlspace, and then I'd have to look up there to see anything at all.

Comcast Sucks, Verizon Rocks!

So, my roommates and I have all been rather unhappy with the service we've been getting from our cable company since Comcast took over Adelphia. I'd be on the phone (my CELL phone, which I only get 300 minutes for every month) for at least 20 minutes, usually more, whenever I needed to make a service call. Plus, our internet pretty much sucks.

Then I looked into getting a different service.

Verizon was offering a bundle with FiOS (pretty much the fastest internet service you can get right now), a land-line phone (yay!), and cable TV (with DirecTV CHOICE), all for less than we've been paying Comcast for just the TV and internet. Plus, a free 19" television to go with it.

You'd better believe I signed us up for that! Then, we cancelled our Comcast services, effective sometime later today. The Verizon people are supposed to be there sometime tomorrow to hook everything up, and the DirecTV people should be there on Wednesday to do their thing.

I told my dad about it last night, and he was all like, "You're lucky. Out here, I have the choice of Comcast or nothing."

Yay for Verizon!

I'll let specific peeps (you know who you are) know what the home phone number is when I have that information. I forgot to write it down while I was setting up the account.

Whoops! It's been a few days.

Let's see . . . what's happened since I actually posted something that wasn't the FoLC map?

On Thursday, Smallville was a re-run, so I actually *gasp!* went to Institute. It was pretty fun. Sister C. was teaching though, so I didn't see Brother M, who taught Institute when I went before.

Something I need to remember:

I can never remember all of the apostles, so I decided to make a list and put it here so that I can look at it more often.

1. Boyd K. Packer
2. L. Tom Perry
3. Russel M. Nelson
4. Dalin H. Oaks
5. M. Russel Ballard
6. Joseph B. Wirthlin
7. Richard G. Scott
8. Robert D. Hales
9. Jeffrey R. Holland
10. Henry B. Eyring
11. Dieter F. Uchdorf (spelling?)
12. David A. Bednar

There. Maybe I'll remember them all now.

The lesson in Institute was about Paul, and the first group of letters that he wrote, which was to the Thessalonians. I've got a bunch of notes about the chapters 2, 4 and 5 of 1 Thessalonians, but I don't feel like typing them all out. It's pretty much a lot of encouragement and advice for missionaries and stuff.

I finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while I was at work on Friday. Since I was only a little more than half-way through when I left for work that morning, I hadn't brought another book with me, so I didn't get to read anymore after that.

After work, I called Comcast to figure out why our wireless network had disappeared from the list of available networks, but they didn't have anything to do with it. It was LinkSys. I called LinkSys, and the techie guy helped me to re-establish a network from our wireless router using Kayla's computer. I had to use her on-screen keyboard though, because the one on the desk was broken.

That evening, Anna and I went over to Jason O's house for movie night. Kayla and Cassie came too, but Patrick J. and Kendra (or is it Kendall?) didn't.

We watched a couple of movies while we played Twenty Questions the board game, and then played three different kinds of Scene It! -- Harry Potter, regular, and Disney. It was Me, Jason and Devon against Anna, Kayla and Cassie. Cassie was pretty much their "mascot," and Devon just sat there, so it was really just me and Jason against Anna and Kayla. Anna and Kayla won all three games. Anna won Twenty Questions.

When we first got to Jason O's house, I slipped down the stairs to get into the TV room, and my right foot ended up underneath me, bent with my toes pointing up toward the top of the stairs. It throbbed for a minute or two, then it felt better.

Yesterday when I went to check the mail, I was coming back upstairs after getting it, but then I realized I forgot something. So I started to go back down to the entry way, and must've missed the step, because I slipped off that step too. And my right foot ended up twisted on its side that time. It throbbed for a couple minutes and I limped for a little bit. Other than a twinge every now and then, it's feeling mostly better though. But two twistings in two days is kinda painful.

I went over to Mom & Dad's house yesterday to get Anna so she could help me with my grocery shopping, since Kimba was borrowing her Cabrio and the Fairlane wouldn't start. I got a keyboard from Dad's spares so that Kayla would have a working keyboard on her computer again. I left a note for her on Notepad too. Anna helped me get a lot of stuff while not paying too much--and thank goodness too--as it was, the bill was $111 and change!

Today was the 2nd day of General Conference. I didn't watch though--I was doing other stuff. I got up around 10:30, got something to eat and checked my online places for updates. Then around noon-ish, I went upstairs to start on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I got through Chapter Three before my eyes wouldn't stay open. I had a pretty long nap--about two hours' worth--and then decided to get some sort of snack. I had some toast and a couple sweet pickles, then got ready to go to Mom & Dad's for dinner.

When I got there, Dad asked me whether he should make meat balls or meatloaf. I said meatloaf. Then, Jason and I played Dragonriders (a computer game based on the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey) on his computer, which Dad finally got up and running correctly.

After a bit, Dad asked us to peel and cut potatoes for dinner, so we did that and got back to the game. Then we had dinner and played until 9pm, when it was time for Jason to go to bed. We got pretty far and got quite a few quests done before we had to stop. We've decided to play every week, and Jason said he'll either not play during the week, or create a new game for playing on his own so that he and I can play the game we started today together.

Next Saturday, I have to remember to go to the pool house between 10am and noon so that I can get my picture taken for a pool pass. Then early next month, the neighborhood is having a community yard sale, so I've been going through my catalogue at LibraryThing to see which books I could stand to get rid of. I've tagged them all "to sell," and there are 209 of them.

Sometime this week, I'm going to look at the physical books on that list (I printed it out) and decide which ones are in "read 'em and pitch 'em" condition, which ones are in fair condition, and which ones are in great condition. Then I'll price them $0.25, $0.75, and $1, respectively. If there are any hard-backed books on the list, they'll be $3 each.

After I've gone through the books, I have to go through my other stuff and see what I want to get rid of. There's probably a bunch of clothing that can go, and I have three towels I never use (I have two that are much fluffier, which I just switch when I do my laundry each week) . . . but I'll figure the rest out later.