our new place

an arduous 8 hours of driving to and from ann arbor yesterday payed off in the securing of an apartment! it's pretty big, affordable, in a good location, and not in ridiculously bad condition. a difficult combination to find in ann arbor, as we've learned. i would post more pictures, but i'm a pretty terrible photographer when it comes to apartments, and i don't think the rest of my shots would really support my above claims...you'll just have to take my word for it.

p.s. fyi: the apartment is definitely big enough to have people come visit and stay in it! i'm just saying....

thank god for quitting my job

why is this kind of thing perfectly acceptable in the workplace? (note: this isn't actually from my old office, but from the bathroom of an administrative building that i would frequently visit.)

that last post was actually one of those see if you can catch the error kind of things

hah! bet you can't tell which two pictures are reversed from the order of their captions!

catching up on the backlog of pictures

1. roommates had birthdays! very close to each other!
2. i made a cake!
3. i made a pie!
4. i saw a brown squirrel with a red tail!

has matt become a giant?

or, why is this bench so incredibly short?

CUTE!! omg CUTE! CUTE! CUTE!

what could i have possibly seen cavorting on the lawn outside of my work today that would have reduced me to squeals of glee?


BUNNIES! TINY BABY BUNNIES NO LARGER THAN MY HAND! RUNNING AROUND IN THE GRASS!


that's all.

attack of the aprons!

i recently made 2 aprons with my roommate's fantastic sewing machine. (mathieu is shown wearing the basic tie-on apron design, and i'm wearing a more complicated wraparound buttoned version. and also bathed in some kind of unearthly light coming through the kitchen door...)




anyway, i didn't know how great aprons were until i had made them! i come home and make lunch almost every day, and with the help of my apron, i never go back to work with peanut butter smeared across my dry-clean sweaters or anything! the aprons were also really fun to make. the upshot of this story is that i really want to make more aprons, but it seems pretty ridiculous when i have 2 already now. so... anyone want an apron? just let me know.

omg.

did anyone else know (or maybe, am i the only one who didn't know) that they're re-doing the baby-sitters club books as a series of graphic novels? i can't wait to see how they depict claudia's awesome outfits....

ps to a certain bookstore employee: PLEASE TELL ME YOU HAVE THESE BOOKS.

yipee!

i'm looking at the weather forecast, and it's just six bright yellow suns in a row! and underneath, it says 58 66 68 68 63 66. mmm... it's about time!

doing my part...

bill napoli, verb

oh yeah....

and not that this blog is all about complaining about my job (side note:
this blog is in fact all about complaining about my job), but last friday,
my boss, in response to a question i had, ACTUALLY SAID (as opposed to
every other time i ask him a question, when this response is only
implied),

"Why are you asking? Isn't it obvious?"

a dream come true (almost)

yesterday, as acrid fumes and thin clouds of smoke filled the second floor
of the library, i assumed my prayers had been answered, the place was
going up in flames, and i would never have to come back to work (or at
least for a week or something). but even though the alarms went off,
everyone left the building, and fire trucks came racing up, it must have
only been a small fire, because we all went back to work like normal.
thwarted again!

yuck

i'm sick! my head hurts and my nose is stuffed up. but i can't feel too bad about it because i called in sick to work and that was fantastic. even so, though, who wants to be sick?

yesterday at work...

...i was given a stack of papers (photocopies of timecards, in case you cared) about 3 inches thick. my job was to put them in alphabetical order.

yes!! going to college was all totally worth it.

can you have too many kinds of tea?

after making a cup of tea (visible towards the back of the lineup, getting cold while i proceeded with this photography project) i had the fantastic idea to lay all the teas out on the counter and count them. 18. and that's not including any varieties owned by rachel or alex (our other housemates).

the other picture is of the water heater, the Great Enabler of the tea obsession, which keeps water at 185 degrees all day long, so you can be too lazy to boil water and still enjoy a cup of tea! perfect!

i am posting from a Widget

...in case you wondered/cared... 

thanks to my 3 (!!!!) commenters for the advice. i'm lucky not to have friends who are mean and/or i-bankers. :)

Some Recent Pictures

subtitle: I Bought A New Battery Charger for my Camera and Now I Can Take Pictures Again.

our very beautiful breakfast...mmmm...

we went to the auto show!

i got my car tuned up here!

i was totally pleased to find this nice auto mechanic 2 blocks away from my house. the 45,000 mile inspection has been passed with flying colors.

our house, again

awesome!

i bet you never thought you might see a post here again!

well, you were wrong....

anyway, about 2 months have gone by since the last post here, during which time i have:

* seen my first job come to an end
* gone to california for xmas
* come back to chicago
* enjoyed one-and-a-half months of blissful nonparticipation in the labor force. (i would say "unemployment," but as all good econ majors would know, you have to be actually looking for a job to be counted as unemployed. which i was not.)
* decided that eventually my savings might run out and i should probably find another job.
* found another job. this job sucks. this is probably one of the boringest jobs conceivable, from a theoretical standpoint. follow this line of reasoning:

Q. What are some of the boringest places in the world?
A. Well, social security offices, libraries, computer parts warehouses, that kind of thing.

Q. OK, following up on that, which type of library would be the most boring?
A. Probably a university library where everyone comes for the purpose of having a quiet boring place to concentrate on their studies.

Q. Well, what part of the library might be the most boring place to work?
A. Probably the budget and personnel office, I mean, they don't even have anything to do with the books which are really the only interesting thing in the library anyway.

Q. And of all the jobs in the budget and personnel office, which might be the most dull?
A. Probably some kind of stupid lower-level job where you would just type thing, enter the data from time cards, file forms and paperwork, make photocopies, and do other random and boring shit.

Q. Wow! that describes my job perfectly! I must have the most boring job of all!
A. I guess you must!

seriously, if my office didn't have windows in it, i might have never come back after the first day's lunch break. and i haven't even mentioned that:

1) one of my two supervisors is an eastern european robot, and not a very nice one at that (the other supervisor is fine, which is the other reason i didn't leave after the first day.)
2) i work directly beneath a blackboard that, each day, has a new "Quote of the Day" written on it.
3) the distance separating my desk from eastern european robot's desk is less than 20 feet. nevertheless, he will frequently call my phone rather than getting up to ask me something.
4) everyone who works in the library is boring. i guess that should be obvious.

so yeah, the job sucks, and i'm not sure what i should do about it. this was the first job i applied to, and i got it right away, so i hadn't put in any other applications. and it's three blocks from my house. and i can easily live on $12.59 an hour. and there's a good chance that we will be leaving chicago in 5 months or so. my plan right now is, i guess, to stick it out as long as i can, and try to save up some money in the meantime so i can quit earlier. my mom said i should work there and continue to apply for other jobs, but i don't know...i would feel bad taking a "real" job knowing that i would be quitting so soon. and it's really very nice not having to commute, and walking home for lunch every day. (i know, i'm so ambitious!) am i a failure if i stay at such a crappy job?? let me know what you think, reader(s)...