The Non-Adventures of a Girl Called Lissa

I'm enjoying being an adult. ^_^

I started working as an assistant editor on Sunday, and it's kind of awesome. :D

The scheduling is kind of weird - I'm working Sunday to Thursday, and how long each day depends on how much there is to do. Mondays are long, something like 9:30 AM until 8 PM. Tuesdays are less, and the other days are even more casual. Lovely. Most of it is editing copy and placing it into the papers (of which there are... 6?), with breaks taken to pop something in the microwave or joke with the guys in sports.

Allegedly I get paid on September 10th, which is also kind of awesome. A paycheck, guys! I'll get a paycheck!

I'm also trying to do the grown-up thing all the way. I scheduled an oil change for my car on Friday morning (since I won't be working then) and I did all of my laundry today. It had built up a bit. I was planning to go to Hackney's for big band music and an adult beverage, but alas the band isn't playing tonight. :(

So, back to folding clothes.

I WAS LITERALLY JUST TYPING UP AN ENTRY ABOUT THE PREP I'M DOING TO START WORK TOMORROW AND GRACE CALLED AND I'M NOT COMING IN TOMORROW BUT I AM GOING IN ON SUNDAY TO GET EVERYTHING WORKED OUT AND MY DESK TOGETHER AND AAAAAAAGH.

and good lord am i frustrated. but i know it's not grace's fault. apparently a lot of issues came up at once (personal ones, like the eic being on by-his-own-choice unpaid leave cos his wife had a baby and such) and she's going to be in meetings all day tomorrow so there's no reason for me to come in. i just. i'm so antsy. i want to get started as quickly as i can, to feel like i'm doing SOMETHING with all of this time i have on my hands. i've been keeping busy, but there's only so much i can do when i have, at least count, $148 and change in my bank account.




In upbeat news, I invited Hillary to come visit this weekend to go up to Mitsuwa since I am lacking in soda candy and Shelly is in real-life Mitsuwa. She seemed really excited about it, which is nice. :D Something to while away the hours until I can finally start the job I've technically had since MAY.

I've never been a massive believer in dream meanings (such as in dream dictionaries, where the same item symbolizes something for everyone), but I do know from experience that personal emotion tends to bring itself out in dreams. I've been lately (since the breakup with Jim) noticed an arc of dreams that quite pleases me.

Right after the breakup, the dreams I could remember all dealt with (a) being together and happy with him or (b) trying to get back together with him.

After a bit of healing time, the dreaming shifted slightly to moderately more abstract material. For example, one involved being at a huge party given by one of his friends, and me alternately searching for him and trying to avoid finding him.

More recently, they've taken another turn. A week or so ago, I had a dream about being all saucy and seriously flirty with some other guy I fancied, and eventually getting together with him.

Last night was peculiar, though - I dreamed that Jim and I had gone to a sportsman park kind of thing (we'd been fishing, but there was also a saltwater beach there), and I got lost on the way back to the car and he left without me. His phone was almost out of battery so we kept having really short abrupt conversations about where he would pick me up. I remember, a bit before waking up, thinking something to the effect of "fuck it, he's never getting here, I'm calling someone else to come get me."

Which I guess is good? Still felt a little depressed at the end, though.

So for the past few weeks, I've been playing an MMO called Rappelz. It's really fun, the graphics are good, and it's a way to stay friendly with Hillary when we're both busy with our own stuff. I played it my first semester at UIC as well, as Hillary was the one who got me into the game in the first place and, again, a good way to bond over something and have something to talk about at dinner.

What I like about the game is that, though you CAN do PvP mode, you don't need to. There's a specific PvP dedicated server, and if you kill another player who isn't interested in PvP you lose experience points and gain immorality points, which turn your name tag red and basically makes you open season. You don't lose exp for killing a PKer, so sometimes one will just be kind of minding his own business and a horde of players will descend on him and beat the shit out of him in mob vengeance.

Anyway, when I first started playing a few years ago PKing happened but seemed kind of limited. You'd die now and then, but not often and not over and over. Since I've started playing again, though, I've been PKed at least 10 times. Three of them in quick succession, as the PKer *killed me, resurrected me, repeat from * until someone very high level came to my rescue and chased them off.

Yesterday, I had the lovely opportunity to ask my most recent PKer what the hell was up with that, and he had the decency to respond. Apparently the sudden rash of PKs (which has been happening to a lot of people, not just me - there's a certain quest area that I've been PKed every time I've gone in for a quest, and tends to be littered with player bodies - is due to some asshole guild holding an immorality point race. Yes, they're going around killing everyone for some guildie glory or something. o_O Which makes sense I guess if you want to be the most badass immoral guild around, but do it on the PvP server.

So here's the fun bit, for anyone who skipped the geekery up there:

The reason why I had the opportunity to whisper the PKer was that he couldn't kill me. XD We were the same character class (dark magician) and we were both overbreeding our characters (meaning we'd gotten to level 50, where you can change your job class to a higher level, but we didn't because you can earn skills faster for about 10 levels if you don't). So we were probably at most a few skill levels apart and pretty evenly matched, and eventually I just summoned a mount and took off for town because we weren't getting anywhere and I had to go find Hillary for a quest. I then celebrated on Teamspeak for about 10 minutes, because I'm finally badass enough to not just discover myself murdered mid-run. ::fistpump::

Oh, and Hillary tamed a red pixie for me. That's very probably not impressive to anyone else, but once it's a reasonable level I will be the pimpest magic user on the block. I'll be up to my unusually revealing chestplate in dungeon parties. :D

In non-gamer news, I'm due to start work next Thursday. According to Grace it's still a go, so I'm letting myself get incredibly excited about it. Eee! Work! So much excitement.

Oh, and I visited Hillary on Wednesday, since she's moved back onto campus and wanted a visitor on her day off of work. The morning had a rough start (had to wait for the same metra train as my ex's best friend, which triggered a lot of upsetness), but once I'd watched a few eps of The Mighty Boosh on the train and got down to good times with Hillary, I felt massively better. I tried to explain the morning mood swing to her, but to little avail - she's never had a boyfriend or a breakup, so she admitted she had no idea how seeing someone could mess me up so bad. Ah well. Felt good to unload it anyway.

I only have four, and they're all of the last band we saw. All of the other ones we really wanted to see were at night (such as Lady Gaga), and my cell phone camera couldn't manage the glare from the screens and stage lights.

So, you get X Japan. :D




I tried to get a good picture of the singer. He looked to me like Goro (from SMAP) if he were a couple pounds heavier, a little older, and... well. In a Japanese metal band instead of Johnny's. Better Photo Here.


Hillary fell in love with the guitarist on the right side. I think it's Heath (Morie Hiroshi), according to Google.

They were surprisingly good. I was shocked. Mostly because I knew nothing about them except that they're apparently a speed metal band. My kinda thing these days. They were very friendly and nice (was their first time playing in the US), and they did the crowd song thing the right way - they told us the line they wanted us to sing, and we went back and forth. In their song X, we were encouraged when the lyrics went "We are..." to cross our arms above our heads and shout "X!" It was really fun, and felt the most like being at a festival the entire weekend. Also there were girls and women with uchiwas, and a gaggle of probably-Japanese girls who were dressed in layers of black and blue lace dresses, high stiletto boots, and gothic lolita-style hairdos. They went absolutely NUTS when X Japan started playing. Amused the hell out of me.

So, work related contemplations.

Today I have two interviews for retail work. Tomorrow I have a third. Which is awesome, I so need to work.

The problem, though, is that I'm starting to feel sort of crappy about working retail. I mean, I'll be happy to do ANY work considering the job market is pretty sparse right now. I've been keeping up on online job boards and specific company websites that I know to sometimes have listed openings. Nothing. Not even stuff I think "well I'm not qualified really, but I could maybe get it if I really impress them." I've branched out to a lot of different fields, such as clerical work, but either they require a ton of experience (apparently you need like 5 years of experience to file papers at some places) or are an hour and a half drive away.

What about the assistant editor job at the Bugle, you say? Well, good question. I sent an e-mail there to confirm that I'd be coming in on Thursday to work out salary and such, and she told me that we'd have to push back the start date by at least a week. Honestly, I'm getting really worried about the job as a whole - I'd love to do it, but it seems like (a) a really unstable position and (b) they may not actually hire me at all. She says she's not stringing me along, and that everything she tells me is in good faith, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll happen. If the higher-ups don't want to hire me, then I won't get hired. If the budget falls through again, then I won't get hired. If I DO get hired, at any moment they may decide I'm too expensive and drop me back into the job market.

I want the job ideally, but I don't know if I want it realistically. Their last editorial assistant was let go after 5 months. While that would still be 5 months of good experience, is it worth it? Would it be better to work retail for two or three of those months and keep hunting for somewhere more stable?

Either way, if I'm offered one of these jobs I'm going to ask for a day or two to think it over, and e-mail Grace to basically force a yes or no. I'll tell her I've been offered another position, and say that unless I'm really actually definitely going to start working there in the next week or so I'm taking it. Somehow I have a feeling she's going to say "yeah, take it." :/

We shall see.

This morning kind of turned into spa day. We had a Brazened Honey face mask in the fridge (Sorry Shelly! I don't think it'd keep for a year, or make it to Japan) so I slathered that on and played The 7th Guest while it did its magic. I washed it off in the tub, followed it up with ocean salt scrub and face lotion, and lounged in the bath a while because that's just how I do.

I got a call from Walgreens around lunch time, wanting me to come in for an interview on Monday. YAY. It's not editorial, but it's work and I need it. I looked up my checking account information online yesterday because my mom inquired, and uh. Yeah, I need to start working. Now.

A cousin-in-law (I guess?) of my dad's also told me that the place she used to work has openings in medical billing and transcription type things. I'm hoping to hear from her soon to find out more about it - all I know is that it's full time, and that I can name drop her. Mom seems to want me to wait for that no matter what, but I don't know. If Walgreens will take me on full time (which I know has insurance for full time workers), it's just down the street. I want to think the other place is in Joliet or somewhere with a bit of a commute.

Also I'm learning a new crochet stitch (the book calls it "Ripple Stitch I" but a google search for ripple stitch brings up wavy rows) and hoping to hook it into a blanket. I was going to knit the planned blanket, but it takes so much longer. I like seeing my results. :P

Now to kind of watch Reservoir Dogs.

I haven't had a lonely sort of night in a while. It's not something that going downstairs and watching TV with my dad would fix, or having someone over, or talking online. It's the single-girl sort that I'd all but forgotten about having until now. Quite survivable, I've done it many a time, but it's strange and unfamiliar to me after it going away for a few months. Meh.

There was a sale on Loops & Threads yarn at Michaels, and I had about $5 left on a gift card. So I ventured out to go pick up a few skeins, which will hopefully turn into a blanket someday. I'm back to knitting at the moment (was crocheting for quite some time) since I like it better for larger projects. I know technically it's more unwieldy and easier to lose stitches etc, but it's more comfortable and I needed a justification for the 29" circular I bought ages ago and hadn't yet used. Oh, and I suck at turning chains so it's nice to be able to make a rectangle instead of a triangle. That too.

While I was out, I stopped at Target to pick up some spiral notebooks. I haven't done any recreational writing in almost two years, and decided it was high time I got back to it. I'm re-fleshing some old characters (Jasper and the now-renamed Tangie if anyone followed me way back when) and working out new plans for where to take them. I picked up four notebooks because even though that's total overkill, Back to School sales mean that each notebook was 15 cents. Between the two stops, the entire spending (minus the gift card, of course) was paid for with $5. Nice.

Came home, surfed the web for pleasing afghan photos (there aren't any :/ ), and watched the first series of The Mighty Boosh. I think I've decided on a pattern to follow because it sounds pretty in my mind (I have two colors, so stripes of one color starting large and going smaller and the other starting small and getting larger), but we'll see in the end.

I played with the sugar gliders for about an hour and started on the second series of Boosh, then hopped in the shower and now I'm back to the knitting.

...tada.

Lacy Gauntlet
Originally uploaded by Lissa B

I'm too pleased with how this turned out to wait for the second one to be made before I show it off. I borrowed a stitch dictionary from the library, and decided to mix and match a little.

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"Leave a comment and I'll respond by asking you five questions to satisfy my curiosity.
Update your journal with the answers to your questions. Include this explanation and offer to ask other people questions."

1. When you buy your own place, what will your first luxury purchase be? (Big tv, fancy stand mixer, etc.)
A deep fryer. Or I'll nick my mom's, which has never left the packaging. In which case, a cat.

2. If you could redo high school, what would you change?
I'd have really pushed to get put on antidepressants much sooner. I was trying to think of something else here, and what I kept coming up with was things that would have been changed if I wasn't dealing with so much anxiety. It got better toward the end, but I wish it had happened before everyone knew me as quiet and awkward.

3. If you could vacation anywhere TOMORROW, where would you go?
London. Where I would stalk celebrities buy a ton of curly wurlies, hob nobs, and wine gums. God I'm hungry. brb foraging.

4. Favorite dessert?
Mom's chocolate mousse. Which hasn't been made in several years, to my knowledge. Hm...

5. The most important lesson I've learned in the past year is:
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And if you didn't want to read all of that ramble, the short answer here is "that pain is inevitable, but not insurmountable."

Soooooo yeah.