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Friday, May 02, 2008
Jay: Sunday
Was supposed to be the annual Easter egg hunt for the little kids, at my grandmother’s house, but I don’t even need to discuss it with anyone to know it’s off. The weather is, well, the kind of weather that makes us do this well after actual Easter in the first place. Cold. Rainy. Completely unsuited to scampering around the yard on a search and consume mission for plastic eggs and their contents.
My mother would be handy in a drought. Pick a day, have her plan an outdoor event on it, and voila, rain. It’s very nearly uncanny.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Jay: Interview With Carly (No, Not the Irish Singer from AI)
Sean Hackbarth interviewed Carly Fiorona, with economic policy questions for John McCain. It’s interesting and not all that long, so you might like to check it out. It includes a question from me, which I gave to Sean phrased as:
Maybe ask if he’d do anything to stop the ethanol-from-food madness, encourage waste biomass or alternatives instead.
It is worth noting that, like me, Sean is looking for work. I’ve known him since 2003, when I started blogging. He’s been blogging longer than most of us, and has some cool experience.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Jay: Crunch Time
This is going to be a different post from the one I started the night before last, with the same title. That one started out on the topic of needing to locate the taxes I’d done, for the partnership and personal federal, and to do the state ones and get them mailed. I since located the partnership ones and mailed them, along with two books from Deb’s book shop. One was an advanced computer book from my collection, so went for $17.50 at about the cheapest price available. For us that’s real money. When it arrives in the twice a month payout. I also rewrote the federal to be neater, and did the state, cursing Romney over RomneyCare. There’s now a form HC, which at 3 pages if you need the whole thing is longer than the main Form 1 at 2 pages. I had the urge to ignore it, but you are supposed to use it to determine your personal exemption. By running too low on money to pay the last $1300 of insurance for Deb and the kids to cover October through December, and failing to apply for subsidized coverage, we paid a penalty of $220 in extra taxes.
Anyway, that’s all done. I have to mail those today.
Looks like the interview last week was a bust, which is fascinating in that it was a temporary gig. Which I suspect they planned to try to get someone permanent out of, and looked accordingly. The interview the week before was obviously a bust as well.
I have a possible something in the works with an internet marketing business. I have someone putting in my resume for a well-paid support job that just happens to be in Lowell, so it’d be on the $25 a day commuting plan. If I can stop worrying about money and the household long enough to chase an income just slightly harder and keep the household, something - even something great - should come pretty fast. It’s probably a matter of keeping the balls in the air a few more weeks.
Trouble is, we’re out of time, and while some awesome people have picked up distress, we haven’t been forthcoming on just where things stand. I’ve threatened to have a fundraising edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, even though I’m too busy trying to raise money to try to raise money. I’ve pointed out the resume, Deb’s Etsy shop and used book shop, and my availability for side work.
I haven’t asked for donations, apart from whatever is implicit in making the PayPal button available. And it feels wrong to do so, much as we get annoyed by unhelpful people who dwell on the fact history ought have been different, rather than acting on (or ignoring) what is. I could say and rue much about how we got here, but that doesn’t keep us from getting evicted.
Then again, I’d rather ask individuals for help than use public assistance paid for with stolen money. Or worse, stolen from the future, given the financing of so much of it through debt, creating a future need for inflation and/or higher taxes. But what do I know. I’m just a crackpot who saw the housing/credit bubble vividly starting years ago.
So yeah. Pretty much asking now, as I prepare to mail the tax returns and then throw ourselves on the mercy of the gas & electric department to avoid having those shut off tomorrow. When I gave them Henry’s birth certificate, which by itself should give us until August 20, they also wanted an income number. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I’d made last year. I would never have guessed it would be low enough for the EIC, or that rent, medical and health insurance technically took 2/3 of it. There was enough in residual, undrawn funds that it carried us a long time in the shutdown of the business (in which mailing the tax returns yesterday is the last major act, though I’ll have stuff to handle for a while).
If blogging is a bit slow, or you see as much on other blogs as here to keep them up enough to justify their value to advertisers, it’ll be because we’re scrambling. The ads, the selling things, the found money, the incredibly generous donations we already received, the Etsy sales - nothing to sneeze at but also in jeopardy because you have to have money for materials and shipping - and the bits of side work here and there only go so far. The fact I tend to stock the pantry as if I’m expecting to ride out the end of civilization - or something like this bad stretch - only helps stretch things so long before real money needs to be spent on groceries and sundries again.
Of course, if we lose power, that’s the end game. What money we do make is online. That would trigger a total meltdown of our situation. I don’t think that should be a problem, but we do have to start paying them Real Soon Now. We’ve been managing to get $250 or $300 a week to the landlord, staying basically half a month to a month or so behind. If we miss a week, game over, barring something like working with us because I just started a job and it’s all going to change. This week we’re sketchy but should manage it. Next week? No idea. I expect to do some small side work early in the week, but not likely enough.
Anyway, if you can hit the donate button, even in small amounts, that would be amazing. Alternatively, use the address deb at neatlytangled dot com for PayPal, as hers doesn’t have a transfer limit (to get it from there to the bank) and is useful that way. If we’ve ever entertained you through blogging, given you helpful advice, or even if you think I’m an idiot but want to keep the kids fed and off the street, perhaps it’s worth something.
Onward! Time to take care of business. Mail tax returns. Deal with utility crisis. Try to shake loose work. Planning to add Deb’s resume to the ones online and put a “hire us” box in the sidebar where “donate” is now, soon as I get a chance. So on. So forth.
Thanks for helping, or even just reading and quietly not saying or doing something unhelpful, no matter what you really think.
Update:
You guys are amazing. Not to replace individual thanks, but holy cow, we’re just blown away.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Deb: I just get so *confused* sometimes.
I mean, there was the whole Bear Stearns thing, and then I saw an article this morning about how they’re making plans to try to bail out homeowners in trouble, and I just gotta ask: when do *we* get a turn? I mean, we looked at house prices, we looked at our bank account, and we laughed and rented because really? Wasn’t going to happen. Now, we’ve got credit troubles of our own, because there’s only so many bad turns your financial journey can take before it all goes to hell, but we’re not part of a recognizable electoral market segment. So as far as I can tell, that means that it’s on us to pay for keeping the people who *are* part of one happy.
And people wonder why I make little scoffing noises every time someone starts raphsodizing about the wonders of democracy.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Jay: Dreams Are Weird
I haven’t seen my stepsister in years, yet she was in dreams two nights in a row. Night before last, there was a mishmash of stuff that included one of my father’s houses, the dream version of it, which in the dream she’d ended up buying. Last night’s dreams included a scene in which I was telling my stepsister about the dream I’d had the night before. Very meta, self-referential, or whatever you want to call it.
The seemingly lengthy end part of the dreams last night involved being somewhere to the north, like NH, ME or VT - the highway I drove down was a generic stretch of what looks like northern New England highway that seems to recycle in dreams where it’s needed - and there being a giant snow storm. I needed to get home, apparently for work, and was trying and trying to get through it, leaving when I shouldn’t have, getting in shoveling scenarios, trying to bash through a snowbank a few feet taller than the car, that sort of thing. Eventually I gave up and stayed in a motel, though even that was a matter of getting a room, then continuing to try to flee.
In the motel, which seemed to double as one of those side of the highway tourist rest stops and the offices of some business (for that matter, in part it looked like a miniature section of some airport terminal, in rustic), there was the challenge of getting something to eat. People were strangely open, but not open, at a lunch counter and small store. I found my way into the dining area, where someone had just been served a sandwich, but most people were just hanging out, and was told they would be serving starting at a specific time. An odd time, though I forget when. It was at the motel where I ran into my stepsister, as I recall.
Fast forward and I am driving down the highway in the morning, bright, sunny, and not a speck of snow, immediately south of where I had stayed. I was fuming at having had to spend the money and time to stay over. I was also alone, but then I wasn’t, because Deb and a kid, presumably Sadie as a baby, were with me. This would fit with the blizzard when we had to stay an extra night at the Park Plaza for Arisia, when Sadie was less than 4 months old. On the way, we discussed the state of the credit cards, and which one I’d used for the stay, and how it sucked to have needed to do that because we so couldn’t afford the $40.
Next thing I know, pressed for time, I was driving straight to work with family in tow, which is odd in that we’d gotten almost home when I got onto the highway going north from here. In reality, I’d have had to pass work on the way there, then changed my mind and not spent an extra 10 minutes dropping them home. Then there was a bit of fuss about where Deb and the kid would hang out at the office, which was a cross between my former large client, a larger business, and the motel I’d stayed at in the dream.
That was about it. I woke up, amused at the whole thing, and started coffee brewing. I certainly hope we don’t get any snow, and that dreaming about my stepsister has no prescient bad significance. However, this wasn’t like one of those “dreams that happen” dreams, or like when I flashed “this could be the last time I talk to her” out of the blue and sat to converse with my grandmother at length less than 36 hours before she died.
Being Friday and not having had it early enough to mail it, I have to make arrangements to drop money to the landlord. We may look like we’re sitting around watching soaps and playing with the kids, but each week we have to come up with $250 or $300 toward rent to defer eviction proceedings. The drop-ins by people who are bringing food donations and don’t care what the house looks like at any random time are welcome but are still disruptions. Visits that are just visits on a couple hours notice tend to get “well, this is really a bad day” pretty uniformly. Friday is especially bad with the actual rent delivery, but today I need to make a post office run - a small contribution to our finances a couple weeks hence because someone bought a book, I need to go to Wal-Mart and figure out how to stretch $30 beyond all recognition - including a couple bucks for yarn for a custom order to help our finances in a week or two, stop at my mother’s for a special crib mattress cover a cousin got us for Henry not to be allergic to the crib anymore (she’s allergic to everything herself, apparently), reply to the person who is offering temp work that’ll be great if the interview Monday doesn’t work out, figure out whether I need $8 or $16 for the train Monday and walking directions from South Station to my destination, help unbury and select clothes sealed in the leaky closet for the winter, continue my office organizing project, make banana bread, figure out what’s for supper and start it ahead of time if needed, and probably some things I’ve forgotten. Like e-mailing someone who might want me to do a computer cleanup Sunday, or Monday evening, and might have others who could use that, if she’s recovered enough from surgery. A few of those and it’s close to another rent week.
And I still haven’t worked on the giant “we’re back” fundraiser edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, but I should, because that could contribute to groceries or to the rent on the 11th. Or gas for the truck, because even if you take six weeks to use a tank, eventually you need more.
And with that, off I go, because the day is getting no younger.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Jay: Happy Birthday
To the amazing Norman Borlaug, who is 94 today. I wrote about him on his 90th birthday.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Jay: Randomness and Resume Repost
I think I’m going to spend part of the day cleaning the office before I get back into job hunting. Well, that and I need to run to the store for milk and peanut butter at some point. And I may toss a chicken in the oven from the freezer, with low heat to thaw and cook it slowly and warm the house, though the next two days are supposed to be colder. I seem to be having a problem with having lost warming fat with all that weight, because in what should not be uncomfortable conditions, I am bundled up and still cold. If I don’t do the chicken, I might get yeast and try bread without milk. The recipe I’d been using calls for milk, but that’s not universal. We’re putting back the wheat for Deb before we put back the milk.
Anyway, the point of this random post, going up here because I don’t have any birthdays to be filler, is to post my resume again, partly in case there is any traffic from Mediacasters.tv. I’ll maybe also link the resume near the top of the sidebar.
This is what I’d call a general technical and managerial resume. I need to create one (well, a new and improved one) oriented toward online content, editing, writing, etc., for those prospective options, which really don’t overlap much with the ones where mentioning blogging new media can be detrimental, or at least not helpful.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Jay: The Star
I was pleased to find that quite possible my all time favorite short story is online, by the recently late and great Arthur C. Clarke.
Well worth a read, or a reread, and it’s quite short, no worse than a longish blog post.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Jay: Obligatory Post
Actually, I didn’t have a birthday until I saw one mentioned elsewhere, so I’d planned this to be something for a “no birthdays” morning post.
I was sad but not surprised Amanda Overmeyer was executed last night. Kristy Lee Cook is one lucky country-twanged long-legged hot blond in a short dress. I might prefer to see Amanda to her if I were attending one of the concerts, but I won’t be, it’s not that strong a preference, and this means, as I noted, Kristy needs the performance of her life next week. Though a couple others flopping sufficiently might be enough, if she’s adequate and being cute.
I was shocked that Carly was in the bottom three. She was too good for that, so there has to be some combination of the controversy sucking away votes, people thinking she’s safe, her support not being as strong as I might have thought, or David Archuletta’s lopsided vote totals sucking the oxygen out of the room and making funny things happen with the rest of the totals. Face it, unless there’s enough controversy, backlash, or something, Achoo is the winner and this is a race for second through fourth now.
Today I have to call the nice lady at the hospital whose sole job is to line people up with insurance if they lack it. Because this Republican Socialism thing, it won’t add bureaucracy at all. Probably about the time we’re squared away with free insurance for the poor, I’ll land a job that includes it.
I’ve been meaning to do a giant fundraising edition of Carnival of the Capitalists. It might be worth a few hours of that to fetch a little grocery money or even an additional week of rent and make me think people actually appreciated my efforts all these years. Which I know they did, and not just the few who have expressed an interest in still seeing it or helping. I’ve been told I should emphasize it and look for business development work, or something like that. That may be gotten to soon, before it becomes moot. I’ve been accumulating links for it.
And yeah, fundraiser notwithstanding, you are always welcome to use the PayPal tipjar button, now more than ever. Or use the address for Deb’s, which is actually better, deb at neatlytangled dot com.
It’s so cute. Valerie has taken to putting a mitten on a foot, like a very heavy sock. She just had me put a shoe on the other foot. She loves to change clothes and play dress-up.
Speaking of money, there’s nothing like going to the store with $16 available, needing diapers and groceries, and being focused on eliminating certain things from the diet.
Although we think we have a good idea what is going on with Henry, and what the allergic reaction was about. That and the idea that food proteins consumed by the mother survice intact in breast milk appears to be bogus, if you research it sufficiently.
Still, the discovery that corn, usually corn syrup, is in almost everything was rather startling and something we’d like to start avoiding. It’s also shocking that companies would put known likely allergens in some of the earliest foods one would feed a baby, thinks you buy because they are safe. I’m also wondering about my own levels of food sensitivities, which are not the same as allergies, for which I once tested negative.
I am not only down 29 lbs from my high plateau and 39 lbs from my absolute high (and annoyed it hasn’t budged further for a few days), but also thinner than the current weight would imply. I went from 42 required to falling off to 40 fitting comfortably to 40 wanting to fall off. Which means some of the tighter pants in that size I have somewhere should fit.
This was supposed to be quick.
The job hunting proceeds apace, subject to excitement and interruption and confusion and mild sickness and such. I have to make a list and follow it today. I’ve been doing a lot of networking-related activity.
Okay, I can’t remember anything else I might have intended to say. I need to get to the actual stuff to be done, starting with an announcement about CotC and link to the resume over at Bizosphere.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Jay: Big Cuba Begets Big Sugar Begets Big Corn
Since we unofficially had added corn to the list of possible allergy suspects and Deb was initially supposed to be avoiding the allergen possibilities, that led to some label reading and the dismay at almost everything being made of corn syrup. As I said, ADM must be proud.
What doesn’t have corn mostly has wheat. The baby’s oatmeal that’s an introductory food that’s supposed to be utterly pure and safe contains wheat. It didn’t used to, which was partly why that was our preferred brand, but apparently that came with the fancy new packaging.
What I pointed out to Deb, in our discussion of Big Corn, and their having the ethanol farce now so they could dispense with the corn syrup nonsense, is that the corn syrup thing is partly a reaction to Big Sugar. Most people don’t realize the extent of sugar protectionism in this country.
In turn, what’s a huge sugar producer? Cuba. Who are some of the domestic sugar producers? Cuban ex-pats. How did all the Castro administrations and associated congresses respond to Cuba being a gulag and to the vote buying of the Cuban-Americans? By fruitlessly restraining trade, topping it off with extra protection for domestic sugar.
Why shouldn’t Big Corn step in and profit from it?
Idiocy.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Deb: Spitzer, again.
I guess I like to live dangerously, posting news from actual newspapers and all. Like the NYT.
Anyway, I said all I really had to say about the thing, and then he said it better.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Jay: Still Excited
About the Spitzer thing, but it’s interesting to see the AP spinning those pedals back as vigorously as they can.
How do you recover from this, even if you don’t get charged, even if you don’t resign? The sheer vehemence of the pleasure so many people derived from it tells you something about accumulated reputation.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Jay: Eliot Spitzer
I know I’m supposed to avoid writing about news items, but I just want to say that I am absolutely thrilled at the Eliot Spitzer news. Usually I am one to be sympathetic when someone is having a Worst Day Ever, but it seldom gets so appropriate or seems so like karma in action.
It’s a bit odd that he hasn’t resigned.
Which one should not have to do merely for hiring a prostitute, mind you, as that should be completely legal. But it’s not, and he’s built a career on persecuting not only things like this, but things that aren’t even illegal. Which is talented, yet repulsively corrupt.
Now off to make supper and tweak the resume the rest of the way, so I can send it out the door.
Update:
See Radley Balko.
Jay: DST is Evil
I really hate daylight savings time.
People who call a clearly wrong number repeatedly aren’t so cool either. And if they aren’t calling the wrong number, and somehow have an almost entirely private number for a reason, even though they are in an exchange where I know nobody and know of nobody who could possibly know me or be connected enough to have been given the number, there is no reason not to leave a voicemail. I just can’t imagine who would be calling my cell from Blackstone.
Trying to force it and being frazzled from the time change weren’t the way to get the resume I am working on the rest of the way done, so there’s a bit more to do this morning. Then it’ll go to practically everyone I know and to job sites and whatnot.
I’m downright spaced out from odd and minimal sleep, and I think mine was awesome compared to Deb’s. At least the girls seem to have slept mostly okay (still sleeping), except one crying incident from Valerie, which seemed to be because she was uncovered and was cold. She asked not to wear a diaper overnight for the first time, so I thought maybe the crying was because she’d wet, or needed to go and was holding it an refusing, but apparently not. She finished training before Sadie and has already gotten up dry some days, so she may do just as well as Sadie has been doing.
I did some casual looking up of what some of my more antique books are fetching online. That ranges from next to nothing to as much as $202, without a lot of rhyme or reason. The oldest is from 1849 and isn’t worth much.
I’d not be looking to sell it, but the Preston Ellis book on family history and descendants of William Ellis of Biddeford is on eBay for $37.50, and can be had newly printed for $70 and change. I paid $30 Canadian for mine in, I believe, 1993. Speaking of which, I realized last week that this is one of the every five years when there tends to be a family reunion. Whether I ever go to another of those and hang around not knowing anybody and being shy, I’d love ti visit PEI and Nova Scotia again. This will be ten years since the last time. It’s sad that it’s going to be so hard to do, even when there’s money and transportation and time. Passports to go to Canada make me not want to go just on principle.
Anyway, time to get on with the day…
Update:
Valerie made it through the night, and a long one at that. Yay Valerie!
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Deb: Here’s some content.
Saw this linked in a thread on Ravelry and found it fascinating:
What follows is the March 27, 1964 New York Times article that first broke the story of Kitty Genovese and the 38 witnesses. It remains today the primary source of popular information about the case. However, as explained below, evidence from her killer’s trial and other sources shows that the popular account of the murder is mostly wrong.
Damned internet. I was supposed to be making dishcloths!
Neatly Tangled at Etsy
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