The moment of truth is coming. My moment of truth. On March 1st the place where I work as a freelance art handler will make their decision as far as which art handlers they are going to bring on full time. They have something like 11 spots open, and 40 something odd candidates to fill them. And most of those who do not make the cut as full time employees will be released.
Now I know there are better people there than me, but there are a number of positions open, and there are many people who, at least to my face, have said they would do what they could to get me on board, have spoken well of me both to me and to the bosses who run the place according to them, and said that I was a good fit for the workplace.
Do I think that translates into a full time permanent job? Of course not. I think that translates into either people telling me what they think I want to hear, or people telling what they said without realizing that since they don’t have the power to hire and fire, their words have no meaning.
Still, I hope they did put in a good word for me, and that the people who make the decisions there like me enough to get me in the door full time permanent. But just in case, I am going to start getting my resume updated, with the experience I have here added to my resume, and hope I can land a gig somewhere else quickly.
But dammit, I want this gig so bad I can taste it. I try to be as smart about my job as I can be. I try my best to be the hardest working guy I can be. I learn everything I can and give everything asked of me. I can do no more. I just have to wait and see if I’m good enough now.
My heart is beating hard and fast as I type this. I am in the middle of doing exercise and am taking the time between sets to write a little here and a little there.
After the first set of today’s exercise, which is chin-ups, I found I was hungry (initially typed decided instead of found, still dunno why.) Talk about bad timing. As it is getting late for me, and I have only a little while to exercise and do everything I want to do, including write this, I say the hell with it and eat. That was perhaps the fastest bowl of cereal I have ever eaten.
It’s a little bit after 10 pm, and I am doing sets of 10 chin-ups. I’ve done five sets so far, in about 10 minutes. I’m not trying to set records either with the amount of chin-ups I do, or the amount of time I do them in. Wife is giggling at me, saying this is hella multi-tasking, writing and exercising at the same time. I tell her that’s what I’m writing about. She giggles again.
It is very difficult to type right after doing chin-ups. My fingers don’t want to move the way I am asking them to. Typos a plenty. I miss keys, type the wrong thing, type in extra letters not meaning to… at a far greater rate than normal. The word late isn’t supposed to have a semi colon in it, and the word wrong does not have an I in it, but you would not have known that I knew that, looking over my shoulder as I was typing just a moment ago.
60.
I spent the time before I started doing the exercise and the eating writing more stuff in the long form running story I’m writing on the “Story of the month” page. I’m up to 6,000 words. I haven’t read it. It is probably crap, but it’s my crap and I like it.
I think.
70.
After my 7th set, I am wondering if I’ll have it in me to do 3 more sets. Not as in actual capacity, 100 chin-ups is not that hard to do over time, it’s wanting to do it, and within forty-five minutes of going to bed.
Oh hell, now I have to. Can’t sit here and say I can do 100 chin-ups after doing 70, without doing the other 30, even with my stomach muscles bothering me. I did something to them. Whenever I cough, I double over in pain, and I can feel them, feel the soreness in them when I start running.
80.
Typing is hard. Especially when you beat your fingers by doing chin-ups right before typing. More properly put, chin-ups + typing = exercise in futility.
I’ve been reading books on putting together a novel, how to work out characters, how to focus on creating them properly. It sounds a hair more complex than I had initially thought, though doable. Complexity won’t stop me from writing a book, or just much longer form stuff than I write here. And I am not sure if I want to write fiction or non-fiction. I could do both. My grandfather’s story sounds fascinating, and I could do that.
90.
I could try for 120. But I won’t. I think.
100.
That feels good. Almost as good as getting the run story to 10,000 words will feel. I honestly wonder how long I can make it last. Like I said, I’m 6k words in, but what I didn’t say is that I have described less than half of the 6 miles run that I am writing about.
Having fun with it, even if it sucks, even if typing is hard.
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
Pic of the day: Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale
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Viddy of the day: Behind The Scenes: Writing the 2012 State of the Union Address
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I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.
It’s been a pretty busy day for me. I woke up (always a nice way to start the day) puttered around the house for a bit. Ya know, made coffee, fed the cats, turned on the computer, smooched the wife, washed my hands, realized I got the order wrong and smooched the wife again and told her how I got the order wrong. She giggled and told me I should go back to sleep. I treated that the way I always do. “I should, maybe I will when you go to sleep” She knows I don’t mean it, that once I’m up, i’m up, but she’s a wonderful wife who has no plans of going to sleep anytime soon. See , she’s been awake all night again.
She tells me I’m full of shit, which I am, so I don’t argue.
After drinking my coffee, I walk down to the store, walk the mile and a half with the cart in tow as I make up the list of stuff we need. Looks like it’s gonna rain but I don’t mind. Need bread, paper towels, meat, coffee, cat food, cookies, lil debbies, other assorted crap. I used to make lists all the time before I went, but no matter how complete a list I made I always forgot something, or more properly put, several somethings, so I stopped making them. What’s the point of the list if you don’t follow it? I get the stuff I need, costs $76 or so.
I forgot the damn bread. Nice.
I walk back up from the store. Takes about 25 minutes. It’s raining a bit on the way back, so I have to stop and move some stuff around in my cart to keep it dry. Some guy walks by real slow, and stops a few feet ahead of me. Looks at me, like I did something. I smile at the moron, and now he looks a bit lost. He’s clearly the slow type. I keep doing what I’m doing, and after about a minute of standing in the rain working with stuff to make sure it doesn’t get wet, I start to move again. I pass dumbass, and smile at him again, and say hello. He makes with the idiot face again. I giggle and walk home, laughing about it most of the way.
When I get back I hear the wife tell me I should take our cat minky to the vet. He’s had diarrhea for a couple of days, and he’s mewling a lot, and hiding. He’s had problems with his anal glands before, and these are the signs of problems there. So after we unload the groceries, I tell her I’m going to go to the vet and make an appointment, rather than call. I walk down and make an appointment, for 4:15 pm tomorrow.
This is gonna cost an arm and a leg, and several other body parts I would prefer not to part with. But if it’s gotta be done. then it’s gotta be done.
Almost to illustrate the point that I need better money management skills, or maybe more money, I decide to go get my wife some lunch. I think it’s gonna cost $5. Costs $9. That $4 is gonna piss me off all damn day!
I hate spending money.
I get home and decide to go run before I lose more daylight. Run almost 14 miles. Not very fast and not very well, but I run them. I get home, thinking that my wife, who has been awake since last night will be asleep when I get in.
Nope.
After putting my time in here on the running commentary page and the iPod I got my wife several years ago, which I now own (she has a better one) I decide to get ready to make dinner and exercise. I sit down for a moment… and fall asleep in a rocking chair. Dammit. Even busy days have some downtime in’em I guess.
After I wake up, I go make the dinner. Easy meal. 2 cans of soup and some mashed potatoes. Mixed together it’s great and takes like 10 minutes to make. I eat that, but not before eating some potato chips and dip and a cup of coffee and some sugary confectionery treats, then go do 250 push-ups.
That was kind of fun, no matter how much crap I toss down my pie hole, I never feel stuffed after doing 200+ knuckle push-ups, which is why I always exercise after I eat.
Then I wrote a short article on the State of the union, 367 words.
Then I wrote some more stuff for my “Story of the month”, call it a shade over 1100 words.
Then this, which is current at 783 words.
Not a great day, but not an altogether bad one either.
The day began with there being a chance that the two head coaches of the teams in the Super Bowl would be the brothers Harbaugh. Both teams that the Harbaughs coached played well, and they were competitive throughout the games they participated in, but in the end both lost.
But the hard part has to be said to be the fact that it was a miss and a mistake that kept the two brothers out of the Super Bowl. The miss by Billy Cundiff with time ticking down cost the Ravens a shot at getting the game to overtime. As a consequence the Ravens lost. The Ravens were in the game the whole time, and Joe Flacco, a man I think of as a second rate QB, put together some really good plays to keep his team in it. Put it like this, on this day Joe Flacco was a better QB than Tom Brady. He was not the reason they lost, like he usually is.
The Niners Giants was kind of the same, only more so, at least as far as the brothers Harbaugh are concerned. The Niners played a great game , aided somewhat by the refereeing, but mainly they were held up by the most stout defense you may ever see in a losing effort. The Niners offense was sparse but effective, Vernon Davis being the only real threat that the Niners O had.
Enter Kyle Williams. 2 mistakes that cost his team a shot at the Super Bowl. The first flub by the Niners Wide out/ Kick returner (Kyle was playing for a hurt Ted Ginn Jr.) was a ball that just touched his left knee on a punt. He played like it didn’t but the astute NY Giant Devin Thomas kept his eye on the ball and grabbed it and ran it to the endzone. Now a punt can’t be run back for a touchdown like that, but he gave the Giants the ball, and they drove for a touchdown that gave the Giants the lead.
Fast forward to overtime, after the two teams played some very good defense and both teams kicked the ball back and forth, the Giants kicked the ball to Kyle Williams, who ran the ball back with 9:32 left. During the run back Jacquain Williams knocked the ball out of Kyle’s hands and again, man of the hour, tower of power Devin Thomas picked up the ball and the Giants had the ball deep in Niners territory. They then moved the ball on the ground for a few yards on a few plays that got the Giants closer to the end zone, and then Lawrence Tynes kicked the Giants into the Super Bowl.
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That said the Giants and the Patriots were the better teams out there. If they weren’t they would not have won.
Victor Cruz ate up the Niners secondary, and helped bring the Giants to the promised land.
Bear Pascoe scored his first ever Touchdown in the NFC championship.
Tom Brady decided he was super when he kept the ball and went over the top on the Ravens D with 11:29 to go in the 4th, and put the Pats up to stay.
The Pats D held Ray Rice to 67 yards on the ground, when the Pats D had been seen as a weakness all year.
Eli Manning proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is a road warrior, winning his fifth road playoff game, which I believe is a record.
The Giants are the road team for Super Bowl XLVI.
Giants – Patriots in the Super Bowl is going to be an absolutely great game.
