One Ringy-Dingy

I took the day off work today to go to a job interview. I know you will find this hard to believe, but working at the factory is incredibly boring. Not satisfying at all. I am trying to get a job as a telephone operator. I spent all day doing stupid tests. I could understand the spelling test, and the typing test, but some of them just didn't have anything to do with the job I was applying for. Like the number sequence test. It had strings of numbers, and you had to guess what would be the next number in the sequence. It was like: 2 14 8 21 19 27 14 ? . What does that have to do with giving out phone numbers? I could figure out four or five of the sequences, but the rest of them were just random numbers as far as I could tell. There was also a visual acuity test, where there were pictures of groups of cubes, and you had to decide what you would see if you were looking at the group from the top. Like that is ever going to matter to anybody. What kind of idiot decided we had to take these tests?

I still have to have an interview over the telephone. They said the phone interview was to make sure the interviewer wasn't influenced by my age or race or any physical handicaps I might have. I really hope I get this job. The pay is a little less, but I would have health insurance, including vision and dental. Right now I have nothing. They also have some kind of tuition payment policy. I don't know if they would pay 100% of any tuition, or just part of the tuition, or only if it's for certain classes or at certain places. I would like to go back to school. I am almost 40, and I finally decided what I want to be when I grow up. I would like to be a psychologist. Not a psychiatrist, because they have to go to years and years of medical school, and psychologists don't. I think I would make a good psychologist. I really listen when people talk, and try to understand what they mean. Sometimes what people say and what they think they are saying aren't the same thing, or what they hear isn't what was really said.

Yard Work

I have a couple of flower beds in the front of the house. Actually, they are weed beds. I don't take very good care of them. Our neighbors are all busy doing yard work. The big trend in my subdivision is putting in raised flower beds using fancy concrete bricks. My husband decided we needed to keep up with the Jones's, so we bought a bunch of bricks and tore out one of the flower beds. Unfortunately, after we tore out the original flower bed, a storm front came through and now it's too wet and muddy to finish work on it. I think it will look really nice when we are finally done. We even got a little plastic pond to put in. My neighbors have birdbaths or fountains, and my husband wanted to out-do them all. We wanted to put in a pond when we first moved here. We even had a hole dug in the back yard, but before we could finish it we noticed our neighbor's little kids coming over while we were gone and playing in the rainwater that had pooled in it. My sister's husband's brother had a big fishing pond, and one of his neighbor's kids drowned in his pond, so we decided to fill in the hole and forget about having a pond. That was a long time ago, and our neighbor's kids are older now, so we decided to go ahead with a pond. Also, the pond we are putting in is a lot smaller than what we wanted before. I think we'll be fine this time around. I just can't wait to get this finished, but it's supposed to rain all the rest of this week.

More Than I Really Wanted To Know

There is a guy at work with an ear-ring in his eyebrow, and in his tonge. A lady was talking to him about his piercings. He told her the most painfull place to get pierced is your nipples, just in case you were wondering. He said he hasn't pierced his nipples, but has pierced his penis. That right there was more than I wanted to know, but he kept on talking. He has something called a ladder, a row of 'ear-rings', called barbells, running up his penis. Eww. I think he said he was high at the time. That almost explains it. Why, oh why, would anybody do that? Eww. Some things are just wrong. He did say he didn't have something he called a Prince Albert, some other form of 'expression' that I don't even want to write about. I Googled this all when I got home. Eww. I was going to put in links to show what I'm writing about, but decided not to. If you are interested, Google it yourself. All I've got to say is EWWW! Talk about nasty.

I miss the olden days, when it was a scandal if a guy had an ear-ring in his ear. I remember when I worked at a restaurant, a new cook showed up that I didn't know. I went to the back door and looked through the window before I opened the door. He had a face full of metal. A row of ear-rings in both ears, a piercing in his lip, nose, eyebrow, even a great big one going through the bridge of his nose right between his eyes. Those were just the ones I could see through the little window. He looked like a complete freak. I could understand wanting to get all those piercings, but not showing up at work on your first day looking like that. Not unless you worked in a tatoo parlor or biker bar.

Mayberry At Its Finest

This weekend there was a carnival in town. I live in a small town, only about 500 or 600 people. There is a group in town that is going to build a sports complex, and they brought in a little carnival for the weekend as a fundraiser. It was pretty nice, for being a little Mom and Pop type set-up. There was a Ferris Wheel and a Carousel, a couple of the little kiddy rides- flying elephants and dragons, tiny cars with flashing lights and sirens, etc. There were also a couple of bigger kid rides. My husband bought $10 worth of tickets, but he didn't ride anything. He has a bad back, and didn't think it would be a good idea to risk it. I rode about three or four rides, and took my niece for a couple of rides.

She is about 5, and had an absolute ball dragging my brother from one ride to the next. He didn't go on any of the rides with her, he just stood beside the rides and watched her go around and around. She could go on twice as many rides if she rode all by herself. She'’s young enough to be impressed by all the rides and people and lights. She wouldn't have had any more fun if they had gone to one of the giant amusement parks where you have to pay $50 a person to get in and then spend 45 minutes standing in line for each ride. Carnivals like this are made for little kids like her. I watched little kids walking around that looked like they had died and gone to heaven.

I have to admit, it felt great going on the rides. My favorite was one with swings you sit on and fly around in a big circle. It reminded me of how much fun I had swinging when I was little. I would swing as fast and as high as I could, lean way back and let my hair fly all over. It was extra fun at night, when the stars were out and the insects were singing to each other. I wish I had a swing set in the back yard now, no matter what the neighbors would think.

Good News And Bad News

This year I only made one resolution. To get in better shape. My goal is to loose one pound every month. Nothing too difficult. After all, it's taken me almost 40 years to gain the weight, why should I expect to loose it overnight?

The good news is I've lost 5 pounds so far this year. You would think I would be celebrating. But no. There's bad news. You see, before I finally lost those 5 pounds I gained 4 pounds. So in reality I only weigh 1 pound less than I did on January 1st. Instead of being 3 pounds ahead of schedule I'm 2 pounds behind.

I'm not very worried about it. I'm obsessive and relaxed about my weight. I weigh myself first thing in the morning. I try to get rid of as much extra weight as possible first. I check my weight before I get dressed, before I load up with heavy clothes, like socks or underwear. I even comb my hair and blow my nose before I get on the scale. You would think if I was going to be this obsessive about it I would have a stroke if the scale showed I gained a couple of pounds, but I don't. I expect a certain amount of fluctuation. I just wish it would flux down more often.

A Night on the Town

We had a wild time on the old town last night. The high school drama club had a fund raiser. A big rock concert. There were two bands, if you could call them bands. The first one was beyond a doubt the worse band I have ever heard. It wasn't really a band, it was just two guys with guitars & a guy with a drum set. It wouldn't have been so bad if one of the guitar players hadn't kept trying to sing. It was so bad I couldn't tell what songs they were playing. The 'singer' didn't know any of the words so he just kind of mumbled & moaned real loud. The drummer was pretty good, and the guitar playing wasn't bad, but the vocalist was completely God-awful. I'm talking Hoover-level suction. If they would have just played around & jammed it wouldn't have been so bad, but that singer should have been arrested for disturbing the peace.

The other band was a lot better. Not exactly Van Halen or anything, but you could tell they knew what they were doing. There name is Alive. They play at the local community college & in little bars in the big city. They were good, but by the time they started playing we were tired of sitting on the hard wooden bleachers so we didn't stay very long.

I knew it was going to be a special night when I saw the table by the door where the headlining band was selling CD's for $2. I didn't buy one, but one of the people I went with won one as a door prize. She didn't want it so she gave it to me. I still haven't listened to it yet. It shouldn't take long to listen to since they only recorded three songs.