Category: Work

Oh, WEIRD

Now that I’m working with WordPress full-time at my new jorb, I’ve finally figured out how to fix my own blog’s login issues. Hopefully.

The Highway I Take to Work

Here’s a sweet panorama of highway 36 heading into Boulder, CO. As you scroll to the right, you will notice how sloppy I am when it comes to iPhone photography and half-assed image stitching. But the mountains should make up for it.

Art, Music, and Work

I was just reading some journal entries from people on the livejournal, and it inspired me to write another entry. Usually, I think of good things to write whenever my computer is off. Then I forget about them.

So here’s today’s entry of importance:

I’m trying to get some of my paintings back from a local tax business/art gallery here in Iowa City, and I have found that is difficult to do when operating on this damned night-work sleeping schedule, which I will hopefully not be talking about much longer. I overslept about a half hour on my day off and missed the (kind of) appointment I had with the owner dude, so I will see him on a weekday, I imagine.

Furthermore, my good friend from the Kansas City Art Institute sent me a good CD of mp3s for Christmas, and I would be listening to those. Iron Maiden, Kraftwerk, David Bowie, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and Grob are always good for a quality listen.

The other day I was having trouble falling asleep, so I thought of all the shitty short-term manual labor jobs I’ve had in the past and present. It was a good technique to get me tired, and I do recommend it.

Christmas and New Year’s Eve

I see it has been a while since I’d have writtened in here. And I guess now the while is over for a while.

Since the holiday season has just gone by, I suppose I could mention Christmas- and New Year’s-related topics. The clever would write "holidaze" and that is alright with me. I will write a list in a businesslike manner:

Christmas:

• 7 days in Topeka, KS
• Completely flipped my sleeping schedule to be awake during the day
• "Lucky," the family cat, put to sleep
• Some grieving
• Many card games
• Met my mom’s boyfriend
• Got some good Boogie Down Productions CDs
• Turned 25 years old
• Got the digital camera I’d been saving for
• Sat around
• Nightly walks with the dog

New Year’s:

• Midnight, New Year’s Eve passed without incident
• Because I was stocking ice cream toppings at the grocery store
• Wrote ‘2003’ for first time on my rent check
• Long lost friends visit unexpectedly on New Year’s
• We go to a nearly empty bar
• Drink a beer
• Go to work

And that was my holiday season, boring or not. The 7 days off work did much good, though.

Request for Time Off

Here’s something I do not like about shit jobs—I ask for 4 days off to catch up on freelance projects, and coworkers get angry because they have to work faster those 4 days, since I won’t be there. Nevermind the fact that if I didn’t take this time off, I’d probably quit. What the hell did they do before I was hired?

/selfish ass

Looking for a Different Shitty Job

This morning I walked around downtown Iowa City looking for a different job. But nothing I found is going to pay as much or give me 40hrs/week like the one I’ve got now. And I’ve got boat payments! I may have to stay with the night job a little longer, until I come up with a plan.

Looking for Work, Public Library Music

So I haven’t been looking for work much lately. I think I’m getting scarily comfortable with my current night stock job at the Hy-Vee. As I stay on longer, they give me more new things to do.

Yesterday I was actually bossing a coworker around, which is hard for me in the first place, and this guy is in his forties, much older than I. Then he asked me if it was okay to do something. I was like sure, dude—shit!

How is some 40 year old guy getting permission from me? This was happening at my webmaster position last year, also. I was supposed to tell these web developers with 7 years experience how and when to code. When I had 1 year experience and did not know what the hell I was talking about.

Yesterday I went to the Iowa City Public Library, which is a damn good library. I think it’s even better than the Brooklyn Library I was going to a few months ago. I picked up the following “def” cds:

Souls of Mischief

93 ’til Infinity

The Brand New Heavies

Heavy Rhyme Experience: vol. 1

Ice T

Original Gangster

The Cranberries

No Need to Argue

Some good classics which I haven’t heard enough of lately. I’ve been called gay for liking that Cranberries album, but what can I do? Souls of Mischief, Digable Planets, and A Tribe Called Quest are some of the jazz oriented rap groups I’ve been getting into to counteract all that crazy Brooklyn shoot your ass off rap. DJs can create some LARGE beats from some jazz loops, and I would be listening to those beats going, “Ummmgph.”

My 9-11 Story

Here’s an itemized account of my 9-11-01 day, as you already know about all the other disgusting events that happened:

8:45am

Head to work on the F train. F train is slightly delayed because of “a fire in the World Trade Center.”

9:40am

Get to work at 53rd St. Work for 10 minutes as coworkers and I get news about what’s going on.

9:50am

Everybody leaves work. I look down 5th Ave and lower Manhattan looks like hell.
I walk through Central Park with a coworker to her apartment uptown until I figure out how to get home because all transportation is screwed up.

2:00pm

Start walking to the 59th St bridge (one of the only open bridges) from West 86th St.

3:00pm

Get on an N train at Queensboro Plaza once the trains start running and go back through Manhattan to 34th St. where the F train eventually and eventually takes me home.

4:30pm

Get home, try to make some phone calls, go to Key Food, watch the news, etc.

Not too much compared to the days of many other people, that’s for sure. All I saw was smoke when I looked toward where the World Trade Center used to be. It sucks that those buildings are now completely gone. It really sucks that so many people died. My mom wants me to move out of New York. And I’m worried about all this “retaliation” talk.

Nobody Sees This

I’ve been recently realizing that nobody sees this blog, so it is doing the job I hoped it would do. And that is to serve as a journal that has the possibility of being seen. For you see, the last time I wrote in any kind of a journal, it was hell to read through because I was writing as if it would never be seen by anyone. And for me, that creates shitty writing.

And my spider seems to have died after sucking all the blood out of some huge insect. Maybe the blood was poisoned or the spider ate too damn much.

My internship just turned into a full time Webmaster position. So now I am an entry-level webmaster. Shit. Who ever heard of an entry level webmaster? This job is doomed.

Spider

There has been a spider in my bathroom for about 3 weeks now. He has eaten 3 insects so far.

My new job (from my internship) let me out early today because it’s labor day weekend. Such a surprise is so far unprecedented in my work-a-life. I believe highly in the get-out-of-work-early style of surprise and hope it continues.

Benefits of Freelance Work

Tonite I am re-living the lazy college days of art school. Two forties of the Olde E and some Beastie Boys, who are no longer annoying after a one year neglect. And I am working on a freelance project.

This freelance project is nice because it doesn’t require me to get up every morning like my internship does. And it doesn’t make me sign “Sorry your dad died” and “Happy Birthday!” cards in the same goddammed day like my internship does.

But my internship is maybe maybe going to turn into an entry-level web design/programming position that will pay for some programming classes and pay a salary, so it’s best not to bitch about it for now.

And the JESUS.

Women in the Workplace

My mom always tells me about how women are underrepresented and underpaid in the workforce of today’s America. She’s quite angry about it.

But since I’ve been in New York, it seems the only people I have ever interviewed with or worked with have been women. I’ve only worked with one man since I’ve been here, and I’ve worked with one million women.

Maybe it’s the profession, maybe it’s the city. But either way, sometimes I remember with strange fondness the old days of working with old cranky racist homophobic sexist Wastewater Treatment Men.

It seems my whole life I’ve been hanging out with thrice as many women as men. Perhaps that’s why I am such a woman.

Shitty Jobs

Last night I was watching Whipple’s World for some reason, and he was asking celebrities what their worst summer jobs were. I think most of them were working at the donut shop or things of that nature. I wasn’t really paying attention because I was making macaroni and cheese.

Anyway, now that I’m searching for full time employment, I’ve forgotten about the summer job scene. Ah, the shitty summer job. My summer jobs have included:

• caddying at the Joliet Country Club
• delivering papers for the Des Moines Register
• detasseling near Cedar Falls, Iowa
• working at the Des Moines Wastewater Treatment plant
• framing shitty pictures at Michael’s Arts and Crafts in Des Moines

I’m not sure which job was the worst, but I sure didn’t last too long with the framing. The Wastewater Treatment plant was quite interesting visually, with all the underground passageways and the pipes everywhere and the big-assed engines. And gallons upon gallons of straight SHIT.

Introduction

Today I have learned more than usual about web design. Next goal is creating liquid pages. Then my sites won’t be so damn small-looking on the large monitors.

Over the past year I have been turning more and more towards web design than illustration. It started out with switching to the Design program from the Illustration program one semester before graduation. I feared the freelance life. So I got into print design, and then into web design in hopes of landing a full-time gig. It’s been a while, but I’m still learning. Still learning how to interview with enthusiasm. Still learning how to prepare for working on a team. Still learning how to communicate with others who seem to know more about it than I do. I am teaching myself, with help from online tutorials and I am getting better at it steadily. And doing less illustration.

I am not making much money doing web work OR illustration, so it doesn’t matter yet. But it will soon.