My weekend. Click to embiggen.
The monotony was broken only by the miracle of Canhenge, which was created by some Public Works officials who clearly were battling some monotony of their own:
(…you take ‘em both, and there you have the facts of life… :)
As often happens in life, we’ve had good news and bad news at Chez Winged Orange.
The bad news is that I was not hired for that job I interviewed for. What makes me mad about that isn’t that I wasn’t hired, because I can completely understand if someone more qualified came in and got the job, but that the rejection letter they sent me was dated Aug. 3. This means that they knew they weren’t going to hire me when I called in on Aug. 5, and they told me that they hadn’t made a decision yet. They likely knew when I called the week before, as well. Now, I completely understand not wanting to give someone bad news over the phone, especially if you’re just the secretary. But why lie to me? Why not just say, “Yes, we’ve made a decision, and we’ve sent out a mailing to our candidates”? Or hell, why not just give me the bad news nicely? Something like, “Yes, we’ve made a decision, and we’ve decided to go with a more qualified candidate.” It’s straight, to the point, and not inflammatory. It’s not like they’d be saying, “You suck and that’s sad!” Ugh.
The good news is, on the same day I was not hired for my job prospect, Scott was hired for his! He’s working for a new sports channel at Madison Square Garden now, doing camera and editing to start off, with a lot of opportunity for advancement. His starting salary is more than I make at my job after two years, so that’s fantastic for us. We’re still going to be living with our parents for at least another year, mainly because I still can’t afford rent AND my student loans, and Scott doesn’t make enough to support both of us, but we’ll be able to afford to do fun things again, and our Disney trip isn’t going to break anybody.
The biggest “good news” (although, really, for me, it’s fantastic, wonderful, stupendous, news-of-the-century news) is that now that Scott has a steady job at a reputable company with advancement opportunities, we can really think seriously about getting engaged some time soon! We can go ring shopping! Scott won’t tell me exactly when I’m going to get my ring, but he did say within the next six months to a year. I want a long engagement anyway (two years maybe), because hopefully I’ll be going back to school next year and I don’t want to rush wedding planning, but I’m really thrilled to be making serious steps towards our future after five years of theoretical “when we finally get married…” discussions. Eeeeeeee!
Now that I know for sure I’ve not been hired for a glamorous new job, I’ve kicked the studying back in high gear. I take my GREs again on Aug. 20th, and there were like two weeks in there where I didn’t study because I was stressed about the job results. I think it’ll be okay; from the stuff I’ve been doing lately, I seem pretty on top of my game, but then again, I haven’t gotten to the higher math stuff yet. That having been said, I’d rather study math because it’s more active. The verbal stuff annoys me; analogies suck ass, in case you were wondering, and the book I have seems like it’s just yelling, “Know more words! Be smarter!” It frustrates me, and makes me want to punch someone in the face. Ideally I want to break 700 in both sections; realistically, I’d settle for a 680-700+ math and a 650+ verbal.
So after I spent all that time spinning, beading, and crying about my Aeolian yarn…I think it’s going to be okay.
I sat down yesterday to unply the beaded thread from the rest of the singles, and it was apparent in the first thirty seconds that if I kept it up, I was going to have a hell of a mess. Fortunately, yesterday was a rational day for me, so I stopped trying to unply and decided just to wind the hank into a ball. As I was winding (by hand, because my ballwinder kept trying to eat the beads), it became apparent that when under a little tension, the goofy plying issue with the thread evened out. It still looks pretty nutty in the ball, but I have faith that if I choose to knit with it, it’ll be more or less okay.
I’m spinning up the other half of the singles now, and once I see what kind of yardage I get, I can see how to proceed. I know that I will not be beading the second half of the yarn, just doing a standard two-ply. My thought so far is to use the non-beaded yarn to knit the main body of the shawl and then use the beaded part for the border. However, since the border takes 45% of the yarn, it’s really going to depend on what the yardage is on the second half of the spinning. If I’m short, I can always substitute a commercial yarn or spin something else.
It’s to the point where I don’t even know where I could possibly wear this shawl, but I’m so far invested in it that I. Will. Have. A. Handspun. Aeolian.
In other news – no, I still haven’t heard about my job. I’m hoping tomorrow will be the day, because I’m tired of literally ducking my principal to avoid being asked about my contract. Seriously, on Friday, I saw him coming down the hall and I dashed into the ladies’ room and stayed there until the hallway was quiet. Scott’s making out a little better; he has a second interview for his job prospect on Wednesday, which is encouraging.
Let’s see. For those who care (i.e., Katie), I’m still going to the gym. I went Wednesday/Thursday/Friday last week, which may have been a mistake, because I am so sore. I’m used to doing every other day, but things came up last Monday & Tuesday, so I rearranged. Also, I completely stand by the claim I made on Plurk that Michael Jackson’s “Morphine” is the shit for workouts – I ran 8.5 mph on Friday while listening to it, which honestly is crazy, considering that when I started going to the gym (sans-”Morphine,” mind you) I could only do about 3 mph. It’s at the top of my workout playlist now, so we’ll see if it continues to motivate. :)
