Oh crap! I forgot.

I updated 'As Yet, Unknown'. There isn't much there yet, but its a start!

To be continued...

So, today I heard from an old friend. First time in awhile... we had a bad falling out last year. Eh, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I wrote her back, quite a long e-mail actually. We'll see what happens.

Speaking of old friends, there are a couple of other old friends that I would rather *like* to hear from again. The Anke to my Ushi. The fellow Shawn lover. My best friend through so many years, so many good and bad times. I don't even remember why we ended up barely speaking by the time HS Graduation happened - our lives just took different paths I guess. But I miss ya Crozzie! If ever you read this, gimme a call...or an e-mail. I heard you've got a baby! I'm so sad I've missed that.

To be continued...

Ahh...a dinky counter. I always liked counters. I don't know why, since they're also something I 'ranted' about constantly!
See here for proof of that.

Gak!

Be ever grateful that you are *not* job searching in this one-horse town. I hear people bitching constantly - Oh, I live in Seattle sure, but there are no jobs here - and I'm sick of it. If I go into the classifieds for Seattle, there are 1500 ads and openings. Swallow your pride and go to McDonald's, its better than being completely out of work. That said, I live in a smallish town with nothing nearby (of size, that is). There are really, no opportunities here, unless you are an RN or NAC. Now granted, I could take that the course for 6 weeks and become a NAC, but since blood and vomit make me...vomit....I'm pretty sure that isn't the job for me. I have applied at the dreaded fast-food chains - to no avail. Apparently even McDonald's can be selective about who they hire when 1/2 the town is looking for work. Bah.

I've seen the job markets in many other cities (trying to find a place to move to, should the money come available). There is work out there, even if it is fast food or telemarketing. Frankly, right now, after two and a half months without a job, I would be ecstatic to do either one! I hate not working. Especially since it means I probably won't be able to get back to school...right away.

Also...cats. We always had cats growing up. At least one, anyway. Right now, in this small old home, we have four. I think that's too many. My dearly departed Dad (God, I miss him) had a cat...she's ancient, but still alive. Her name is Bonnie, short for Ebony, and she's grouchy :P My sister's cat (she can't have it with her right now) is also here. Cannabis (she was cross-eyed as a kitten and Sis' friend said she looked stoned...Cannabis stuck) is her name. Then, when I was living with HP a few years back, I adopted Juno Felicity (Travis and Amy made me take her home, and I never regretted it). She's a darling, everyone loves her. Finally, just weeks after Pookie moved in, we were at Fred Meyer's. A little girl had a boxful of kittens to give away. He was sooooo adorable, petting the little babies, that when he asked to bring one home, I caved. Now we also have Zeus. He's a fireball. Love him, but damn, the cat next door is in heat, I think, and he isn't fixed yet. I think we're gonna end up with little black kittens in a few months ;P Plus, he's driving us crazy, constantly wanting to go outside and chase 'Mama-kitty' (That's what Pook and I call the cat next door, since she just had a litter last year. The kittens used to come over and play with Zeus, until they were given away). At least we're the owners of the Papa not the Mama, so it won't technically be our problem. Will it? I don't know. I've never had an unfixed animal before. As soon as we can afford it, Zeus is becoming a Eunich. ;P

Til later,
....Me....

Ack! In my last little (hah!) post, I mentioned some old nicknames. I forgot about Ushi...Lourdan (also Lourdan Hazei in DAoC/Iseult/Albion). Hmm... Meanwhile, as I desperately try to rename Summit (of Madaya, my current project) I can't even come up with a name for myself!

Oh! Wait, my real name shows up?! Ack! Must change that too.

HP wants me to call Summit something like Covara. I think that's too girly for the only female Commander in the entire Tavian army...but that's just me. Man, Pookie is still sleeping! We had a late *wink wink* night last night with Miss Judy out of town (Miss Judy aka Mom...don't ask why I call her that, it just happened one day and stuck).

See Ya',
....Insert Clever Nick Here....

Well its been a very long time since I last posted to a weblog/diary sort of thing. Last time I was masochistically getting my heart thrashed repeatedly by 'AA'. I can't remember how I referred to him, though he has since become 'The Bastard'. My fiancè (is that the right accent? *shrug*) likes to call him 'Pop Rocks' now, having heard most of the sordid tale... I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions as to how that name came about.

Anyway. I wonder if I could upload my old layout. It featured Malinai Mars from T.E.D. and I was pretty proud of it... Ahh, those were the days. When I thought I had talent for web design. *giggle* But it seems like everyone is a web developer these days, and heaven knows I hate to conform ;P Actually, the past two years have been very important to me. I went back to college and studied both English (my passion), and Japanese (the one subject I actually had to work at). Then Travis killed himself and I dropped out. Its easy enough to blame him for that - his death really did upset my life. I couldn't figure out why I wasting so much time in a stupid classroom when I could be out 'finding myself'. Well now, as I fight my way *back* into college, I wish I hadn't left. If I had stayed in, I'd be graduating this Fall, Winter Q at the latest. I could be teaching by the next Fall. As it stands now, I won't graduate until at least 2005... Bah! But it hasn't been all bad. I worked for over a year for some people I truly hated (public humiliation was only the first of their evil ploys to get me out). Then, after transferring to a new store elsewhere in the state - picking up and moving 300 miles, I might add - they slandered me to my new supervisor with all sorts of insane lies. As if they would have seriously kept me, and promoted me, if these allegations held even the tiniest glimmers of truth. Bah! Again, I say, Bah!

So...after that mess, jobless and living in a strange city 300 miles away from my friends and family (except for my Dear Pookie, who of course moved with me), what did I do? The most evil, hateful job possible...I went to work for a phone company. No, worse than that, a telemarketing company who was comissioned to act as 'Customer Service' for this Mid-Western phone company. I hired on, with a sign-on bonus (if I had been paying attention I'd have realized sign-on bonuses were frequently used to entice people into the high-turnover world of telemarketing, but I was blind), under the impression that I was to be a 'Customer Service Representative' for this unnamed MAJOR phone company. After two weeks of learning everything possible about their plans, their rates, their DSL, the instructor looked at us and smiled with this wicked little smile (don't get me wrong, I adored Judy P., but the smile was a little scary) and told us. "Don't forget the call cycle! Upsell, rebuttal, upsell, rebuttal! And if its a CRU, you had better remember your save attempts!" I was shocked to find out that we were salespeople. Horrible, hung-up on constantly, hated salespeople. The one saving grace to this awful job...the customers were calling us, not vice versa. Of course, if you have ever called your phone company to add or remove a service, and gotten a long, tedious sales pitch, you may very well have talked to me. It was terrible, but you get used to it. I was especially good at selling little things, or upgrading your package (It'll save you money in the long run, listen to these numbers!). But I was also very talented at getting hung up on. After the first bad review (having been monitored by the Supervisor and given a 50% on my calls), I realized something. If I wanted to keep my job, I was going to have to do the required call cycle, even if it meant getting hung-up on. So, against all my instincts and definately against my better judgement, I turned into a machine on those phones! I got 100% QA reviews everytime. Hell, they even had the 'big boys' from that unnamed company, listening in on my calls (Client Monitoring allowed the Phone Company bigwigs to listen in on the Telemarketing Company's employees - just to make sure they were doing their jobs)! And though my numbers blew goats - I wasn't the worst saleswoman on the floor, but I was pretty far from the top of the bonus list - I was making good money, and always made production goals.

Why am I telling the world this? I don't know. It surely doesn't matter to anyone but me. So, to make a long story short (well, its a little late for that, but bear with me a few minutes more), I loved the people at this House of Evil out by the airport in a city 300 miles from my home, but I despised the job. And when the Holidays came around, and when my fiancé was laid-off, we basically said, "Screw the lease"; then we packed up a HUGE Budget Truck (the only one they had available on Thanksgiving Eve, lol, but at least we got it for the price of the small one) with our meager possessions and moved back to the one-horse town we had fought so hard to get out of.

Where are we now? Still engaged. Living with my mother (though she is NEVER around, so we may as well be living alone). Looking for work in this stupid town. Babysitting sure isn't paying the bills, and oddjobs are a little too scarce this time of year. I keep hearing about my High School friends, a little blurb here, a little rumor there... It seems most of them are married/pregnant/have kids/divorced. This is very strange to me. I keep forgetting we're not 18 anymore. How have five years gone by so quickly? Dear God! That means I've only got five years until the dreaded reunion! *panic attack* I've gone from one of the best and brightest to...um... not much of anything. I hope finishing my degree and turning to teaching will give me something of which to be proud. As for Pookie and I, we're engaged and living together, but we haven't set a date. Originally, when we got engaged almost a year ago, we had planned to do the deed in May of 2003. But here it is, halfway through February, and we can't afford to eat let alone get married. So that's being put off - especially since he really wants his family (whom he really doesn't like much, go figure) to be in attendance when we do get married, and there is no way they're going to pay to come all the way out here from Ohio (to Washington). Oddly enough, his parents' phone company is the same one I worked for in 'the city 300 miles from here'. I always expected to type in a phone number and nearly choke when I discovered it was Pookie's Mom yelling at me on the other end of the line.

On the subject of his mother, I just want to say I think she's a real bitch for not including me (not even my name) on the card she sent for Christmas. I mean, how hard would it have been for her to scribble... "Merry Christmas Son & Girlfriend"? My mother (who wasn't even fond of him when we first got together) has included him since the day he moved in - she even gave him a Birthday card, a Christmas Present, AND (as it is tradition in our family) filled a stocking for him! But his mom couldn't even add my name to any of the cards she's sent him in the past year (B-day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, X-mas).

I guess I've ranted and raved for about five paragraphs too long, so I'll sign off. Except that, I don't really have a name anymore. A handle, a nick. I used venusbati as the blog's url...but I haven't gone by that in years. Or Sweet Tangerine (I love ya Happy Potato!). Or Posie. Or Shalisa Whiteoak. Bleh. I'll just use something less complicated.

~Pookie's Angel