(no subject)
Life is good right now, much to my surprise. Just got home from my job at the Press Herald, which despite being about as entry-level as you can get (100% glamour-free!), is something that I'm actually enjoying, for the most part. C.J. (my superviser, I suppose I'd call him) says they've had people quit after one shift before. I guess I can see how somebody would absolutely hate it (taking calls from coaches and writing four-sentence summaries of the games), but it's incredibly easy and it's only stressful when the calls come in rapid succession. And most importantly, it's experience. It may be incredibly basic experience, but it's experience nonetheless and with any luck I'll be able to use it down the road. With even more luck I'll be able to move up within the Press Herald to copy editor eventually.
The other nice thing about a job is that they actually give you money for doing it. Today I was able to deposit two paychecks--one from my first full week at the newspaper and the other from the three-day temp job I did last week. Hey, those 12-hour days really did pay off! (The temp job, as long as I'm on it, was mind-numbingly dull--cutting and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another--but too easy to turn down the $10/hour.) Most of that money's going to be heading right back out, of course. The Volvo officially went into Meghan's name this week so we had to purchase insurance. Then there's the excise tax and the registration...look at that money fly. But we have a car now. It's our car. It's still only one car, of course, which is going to make things interesting down the road, but we've achieved one more stage of independence.
I'm doing the 12-hour thing again the next two weeks. I've taken a well-paying temp job of the data entry type and Meghan's got training and a new job starting Tuesday. Neither her new job nor the temp job are downtown, which could mean some serious finagling to get me to Scarborough, her to Westbrook, and then me back to downtown Portland over the next two weeks. I'm confident we'll work it out somehow. It just won't be easy.
But after my last temp job, I'm confident that I can handle this sudden spate of work. I'm not going to have any life outside of work for awhile, but I can handle it. And there was really no question of whether or not I would take the temp job. I can't turn down that kind of money, because I don't know when I'll be able to find something permanent to complement the newspaper job.
I've finally got a bowling league to look forward to on Sunday. Getting the evening job at the Press Herald threw a monkey wrench into our plans to join a Friday night league and it's taken a couple weeks to get something else worked out. I may have to work occasional Sundays, but I'm hoping I can wiggle out of that. I'm starting to get rusty. Today was the first time I'd gone bowling in I-don't-know-how-long. I'm heading to the "pro" shop at Yankee Lanes tomorrow (it's more like the amateur shop if you ask me) to have them fix the thumb hole on the free Maxim (read: spare ball) that I got for bowling in the summer league. This whole free ball thing has been a bit of a debacle, but I'm hoping that after tomorrow I'll finally have a real working plastic ball. Hooray!
The other nice thing about a job is that they actually give you money for doing it. Today I was able to deposit two paychecks--one from my first full week at the newspaper and the other from the three-day temp job I did last week. Hey, those 12-hour days really did pay off! (The temp job, as long as I'm on it, was mind-numbingly dull--cutting and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another--but too easy to turn down the $10/hour.) Most of that money's going to be heading right back out, of course. The Volvo officially went into Meghan's name this week so we had to purchase insurance. Then there's the excise tax and the registration...look at that money fly. But we have a car now. It's our car. It's still only one car, of course, which is going to make things interesting down the road, but we've achieved one more stage of independence.
I'm doing the 12-hour thing again the next two weeks. I've taken a well-paying temp job of the data entry type and Meghan's got training and a new job starting Tuesday. Neither her new job nor the temp job are downtown, which could mean some serious finagling to get me to Scarborough, her to Westbrook, and then me back to downtown Portland over the next two weeks. I'm confident we'll work it out somehow. It just won't be easy.
But after my last temp job, I'm confident that I can handle this sudden spate of work. I'm not going to have any life outside of work for awhile, but I can handle it. And there was really no question of whether or not I would take the temp job. I can't turn down that kind of money, because I don't know when I'll be able to find something permanent to complement the newspaper job.
I've finally got a bowling league to look forward to on Sunday. Getting the evening job at the Press Herald threw a monkey wrench into our plans to join a Friday night league and it's taken a couple weeks to get something else worked out. I may have to work occasional Sundays, but I'm hoping I can wiggle out of that. I'm starting to get rusty. Today was the first time I'd gone bowling in I-don't-know-how-long. I'm heading to the "pro" shop at Yankee Lanes tomorrow (it's more like the amateur shop if you ask me) to have them fix the thumb hole on the free Maxim (read: spare ball) that I got for bowling in the summer league. This whole free ball thing has been a bit of a debacle, but I'm hoping that after tomorrow I'll finally have a real working plastic ball. Hooray!