Workin’ Girl

Last week I got a job at McDonald’s. I am not joking, but it is McDonald’s Garden center not the fast food joint. I assume that this is just a tweener job until I find something better. But in the mean time I am learning new things about horticulture, which is definitely one of my interests. I was also hoping, I admit, that I would be getting free plants like I did at the last previous similar job. However, that is not the case. This is a smaller operation and every plant is used, leaving no left-overs. Eventually I will get a 25% discount to use in the store and I plan to take advantage of this to get my vegetable garden started this spring.

So I have worked a full 40 hrs this week, something I have not done since 2007. How was it you ask? Fairly lousy. I was hoping that the exercise would be beneficial to my shoulder, but no. I spend so much time hunched over trays of plants that all the knots in my shoulder that the physical therapist had managed to work out have returned. I had to quit physical therapy too, so that hasn’t helped. My co-workers and supervisors are nice enough, but like any work place, there are the underground dynamics of who likes who and who freaks out over nothing. I want to safely skate by all of this without being mired, but unfortunately I share the same last name as one of the less popular supervisors, so I am already entangled by accident when some assume I am related to this person. If I compare this job to my other similar job, they would balance evenly, each having their perks and downs. Here the perk is that I am switching jobs fairly often and doing things like planting cuttings and pinching plants to make them branch, all of which I am interested in learning.

The biggest downer and the reason that I am most likely to leave this job is a no ipod policy. That is right. I work by myself most of the day doing mindless tasks and there is no music and the employees are not allowed to listen to headphones. The reasons range from safety to another method of employee control and none of them make very much sense to me. One of the reasons that I am willing to take a job like this is so that I can listen to books and podcasts, so this policy is not working for me. At first I thought that I would be able to use the time to think about various projects and problems with my writing, but I realized that I think on paper, so that was not a viable solution. If I am completely by myself I will sing the three songs that I know over and over again, but that too gets old very fast. By the end of each day I am ready to go nuts. Sometimes I can talk to people, but some of them have heavy accents, which, combined with the loud fans and my poor hearing, generally results in a frustrating experience. So the end result of all of this is that I have a job where the benefits do not really outweigh the costs and I have little time to look for a better job. Sigh.
Oh yeah, the MD job is also in Hampton. Although it is not far, I have to drive through a tunnel to get there and in my first week I already spent a half hour waiting while an accident cleared. In the summer it will only get much worse. I really expect that I will not be working at MD’s after a month and a half. Long enough for me to learn what I can of horticulture, take advantage of the discount and hopefully find a new job. Maybe I will end the job in style with my headphones firmly glued to my ears and commenting that I decided that the rule didn’t apply to me. I’ve never been fired before, but it might be worth it.

I am working on a new color pencil drawing, which I think is turning out well. I hope to enter it in a color pencil show this summer and sell it. Here is a picture of the work in progress.

Seriously?

I went to make some photo copies at Office max. When I went to pay for them, they asked for a receipt. They sent me back to the copier to print one out. An entire sheet of paper to tell them that I made 9 photo copies. Seriously? How wasteful can we be? I know one piece of paper is not that much, but every person that goes into Office Max to make copies all over the country wastes one piece of paper because they are too lazy to walk over to see how many copies you made or because people are dishonest. If I have a choice in the future, I am going to a different office store, although I usually do better and support a local print store on Wards Corner.

Last week I had a job interview at a private school for a particular religion. I won't say which in case you belong to that religion. The job was to teach 7/8 grade science. The school separates the boys and girls into two separate classes and they combine the 7/8 grade classes so that they will have enough students for the class (about 10 students). Interesting. Then about half way through the interview, the superintendant told me that there was a dress code that women wear skirts. I, of course, was wearing pants. They secretary apologized later for not calling me to tell me. Anyway, I didn't get the job. They thought the kids would take advantage of my inexperience. Obviously I did not emphasize the fact that I had two brothers and knew how to keep from being run over. Oh well, it saved me the decision of whether to take the job since it was a long way to drive and not very well paid.

This week I went to a career switcher program to see what would be involved in becoming a high school/grade school teacher. I know. Before you get excited let me explain a few things. Many people have told me that I should get a job teaching in HS, but they assume that, because I have taught college, teaching in K-12 should be a snap. The sad truth is that you do not need any training to teach college (You all have had that professor that shouldn’t be teaching). To teach in k-12, a person has extensive class work and classroom training. So I am not qualified, despite all of my education, to teach kids. As many of you already know, I don’t necessarily want to teach since I did not enjoy the experience before, but I have to do something so I was investigating the possibility. Also, where ever Wes and I go I should be able to find a job. So I went to a glorified sales pitch of the program at ODU where they train people that have already been in the work force to teach. One of the first things they put up was a list of reasons why people quit teaching in their first year. Hmmm…I know that list…it’s almost exactly why I decided I didn’t want to teach college. Apparently it’s not any better at the K-12 level. I almost left then, but I made myself stay to be sure. They next hour was about how much money and time you would have to put forward into this program. Then I left. I reasoned that if I was going to invest money in myself, it would be to get educated about Environmental regulation instead. That doesn’t necessarily rule out teaching, but I would have to be hired first and then complete the training while I work.

In the mean time I have been working up designs for a garden in the yard for yummy veggies. I even went and junk picked some 2x4s down the street, although I think that they will go into the construction of a compost bin instead. The weather here has been gorgeous so I am thinking about outdoor projects. I have not been neglecting indoor projects either though. I have also been working on a color pencil picture that is based on a photo that I took of Olbrich gardens. It is challenging and engrossing at the same time. Also, here is a picture of the design that I painted on the soffit in the kitchen. I still need to design something for the center.


As I have mentioned, Wes is off fighting pirates. There have been a few news clips on NBC and ABC lately, so keep your ear open. He is on the Mahon, so if they mention a ship name, you’ll know which one it is. If you want, I can ask him to bring you home your very own pirate, but I have to warn you that they are not like Johnny Depp….at all…

Splinter Blogs

So I have noticed that my blog has taken a slightly different direction lately. I used to just post new about what was happening in my life, but lately I have been shying away from that and posting creations and introspections. So I have decided to create a new splinter blog dedicated specifically to art, stories, and essays, so that I can dedicate this one more completely to what’s new in the Alisha World for those of you that are interested in what I am up to, but not necessarily the minutia of my thought process etc… If you are interested in those things, please go to: http://beyond-the-watchtower.blogspot.com/

However, I would love it if everyone came to visit me on both my blogs. Yay for comments!

So back to what is going on with Alisha. I think that I have been neglecting talking about current events because I still have not found a job. After 5 months of serious searching and applying, that kind of failure begins to wear on a person and I have not talked about it because I don’t want this blog to be a downer for all my friends and family. Add to that the fact that our tenants have been negligent in rent and that I miss Wes, I am not always a cheerful person. But shake it off, because I do everyday and I know that things will have to look up one of these days. If fact, they already are because one tenant paid rent and the others are promising that they will pay any day now. Also every day is one more day closer to the day Wes gets back. I have been hosting a girl’s night with Rachel and Leah for a couple weeks now and they have been vital in keeping me in good spirits. Thanks girls!!! I have been making as many new friends as I can and have joined several writer’s groups. I have been integrating myself into the Hampton Roads community in every way. Best of all, I have had a chance to write and work on some art project over the last couple months. I have been writing quite a few 1 ½ page essays this last week (see blog above) and enjoying that quite a bit. I am hoping that it may lead into a job as a writer, but who knows. It’s strange too because even though my need to find a job is much more dire than it was a couple months ago, I have let go a little bit and relaxed into "the anything’s possible" frame of mind. I don’t know that this is going to help me get a job, but it certainly will help me not be so stressed and miserable about the lack.

The house is coming along nicely. I have been a slacker on painting window sills, but have been slowly working on them. More and more items keep getting added to the “wait until Wes gets home” list, but that is OK. I know that he will want to do stuff to so that it will feel like his home too. OK, maybe he won’t want to take doors off hinges so that I can paint them, but I didn’t want to wash and hang his t-shirt collection. We all have to make sacrifices. ;)

Max has been pretty consistent about driving me nuts. Wes misses him, but I came up with a solution to make everyone, especially Willow happy.

The one blight on this last month is my last science paper. I have not touched it or written a word on it. I keep scheduling days to work on it, but somehow those days keep getting way laid into something else or I conveniently forget about it. I am putting it on my schedule for tomorrow since the whole day is currently appointment free.

I started physical therapy today and it was pretty painful. The new PTist was really pushing and prodding some muscles which, while he was doing it, hurt worse than I ever remember. He came to the conclusion that something was out of place, like a bone. Hmmm… I have had ribs pop out of place before, but I usually know. I have known that things weren’t quite right with my shoulder for a month or 2, but not that it was that specific. After he prodded for a while, he ultrasounded my shoulder (to check for babies???) and then electrocuted my back. LOL! The ultrasound is actually to warm up the deep tissue and the electrical stimulation is to get the muscle to contract until they are just too tired to contract anymore. That is when the knots start loosening up. I feel a little better now in some ways than I did this morning.

So, I am going to take Max for a walk while the sun is shining and in between random snowflakes (we only get them one at a time here in VA). Until next time...

Library of Babel

Inspired in part by an essay called the “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges.

One of the many things that I want to do in my lifetime is write. I have accomplished this to some degree, but I still have a long road ahead of me. However, every time I walk into a Barnes and Noble or Borders I get so discouraged. It just gives me a glimpse into the vastness of the written word, like a great chasm a person could fall into. I often hear complaints about how BN is “the enemy of the midlist novel”, so I consider the stock on the shelves of Barnes and Noble as the tip of the iceberg. Only the most popular books make it onto the shelves. Yet there is so much more information in written in books, magazines, and now on the internet. It would be impossible for one person to read everything that exists, so how does one person choose what to read?

I have always felt like I am not well read. I hear about people who are considered well read, but I have to wonder if that is even possible. I guess I believe that it is possible to be well read in a particular area, but not in general. But I also feel that every new generation has a greater task being well read. Consider science literature about 100 years ago. It was practically nonexistent. It was easy to be well read then because of the simple fact that there wasn’t that much published. Even if a person was very prolific in his studies and discoveries, there was no drive to publish it. Fast forward to a “publish or perish” mindset, where half finished studies are published and some publish controversial findings just so that they will be cited by others and improve their importance on some numerical scale. How is a new graduate student to become well read with all this paper to wade through? I once heard a professor comment on how poorly read new graduate students were. I wanted to jump across the table and throttle him. He had been in the field for close to 40 years. Of course he was well read; he had been reading almost 2 of my life times. Back when he started reading science literature, they were still scratching the notes on cave walls! Of course they weren’t actually, but the science literature was much less prolific when he began to read it, so he had some chance of getting a handle on it and has been able to keep up since then. How is a new graduate student ever supposed to be well read when there is a whole history about to crash over them like a tsunami? And it is increasing every year!!!

So back to my point about Barnes and Noble. What I said above about science is true of most literature fields and one of the recommendations that are often given to aspiring writers is to be well read in their field. So as an aspiring Science Fiction/Fantasy writer I have been considering this and looking around me at SF/F literature and feeling just as overwhelmed as in the science realm, despite the fact that I have been reading since I was a little kid. Then I start to worry that whatever I manage to produce will get lost like a dust mote in a sandstorm. So I walk back out of B&N with my head hanging a little lower. Fortunately I have a short memory and am soon optimistic again. I think that even if I never get my work published, it will still be there and a member of the Library of Babylon. I think that I could potentially just post it on line for anyone to read. Ha! Then I think about all those other people out there who have similarly posted for free so that someone will read their work and all those people who will never let anyone read what they have written and it just cascades out before me as this never ending waterfall of paper. Aaahhh!!! Now I know that the SF/F in B&N is the tip of “all published SF/F” iceberg, and that “all published SF/F” is just the tip of “all SF/F ever written” iceberg.

Finally. I like to look at the past and look forward to the future. I look at authors like Austin, Tolkien and Shakespeare. Are those authors so popular because there were among the few published authors of their time or because they are truly magical in some way? I think there is something special about their writing. Shakespeare and Austen practically need a translator to be understood, yet people still puzzle it out and enjoy the story. In fact, one of the reasons I keep going back to Austen is because I puzzle out some new little joke every time I read it. Tolkien, I am not sure about. One of the reasons it was so popular was because her was world builder. He created the rich and complex world with its own problems and races and topography and history. It was new. But I think about children of this day who might read other books which are also world builder books and I wonder if, but the time they read Tolkien, will that phenomenon have lost its magic? Will Tolkien be swept aside by that Potter kid? I don’t know, but it is an interesting question to ponder which books will remain in an average library through the future ages.

So as I send this little mini essay like a hopeful paper boat into the ocean of online information, I wonder if it will mean anything. Even if no one reads it, in the end, I have arranged this series of words and letters in a pattern that has pleased me. I have created something new to be shelved in the Library of Babylon.

Growing up…aahhccckkk!

When I was a wee lass, I said (as all wee lasses do) that I would never grow up. Of course this transformation happened so gradually that I didn’t entirely notice it. I did see a few things, like the realization that not everything needed to be pink or teal, but there was so much more. Like cartoons…when did I stop liking cartoons?? I enjoyed them all through college and still reminisce about particular episodes from the Power Puff Girls. When I got cable again after moving in with Wes, I was excited to know that I could watch cartoons on Cartoon Network anytime I wanted…yet somehow I never turned it to that channel. Then, as I was putting thing away after our latest move, I realized that so many things just didn’t have a place in my life any more, mostly knick knacks. Then I realized that I had stopped buying knick knacks over the last few years, contenting myself with only buying Christmas ornaments that I only had to look at once a year. These were just small changes.

Today, I found myself reading nonfiction, listening to NPR and podcasts and even tolerating the news for about 15 minutes. For those of you who are adults already, this may not seem like shocking behavior, but to me it is. Previously, if I had time to read and a choice of reading material, I would read fiction until all hours of the night. I couldn’t get enough. Lately, I have come to realize that I don’t want to be emotionally entangled in the fictional tales anymore. The world has enough true, sad stories without getting depressed over fictional characters. Reading used to be an escape from reality, but fiction almost seems to be getting too close to the bone. I started reading young adult and children’s books for lighter reading, but even many children’s books venture too far into the land of emotional strife. These same feelings have led me to stray from my audio books into the endless realm of podcasts, which I previously had no interest. And the News… oh the news…it is so sad and depressing and I never wanted to watch it. Now I am building up my stamina and may one day get through an entire episode of the news in one sitting.

So, as I was thinking of all these changes in my personality over the last few years, it occurred to me that I am growing up. In protest, I went out and did cartwheels in front of my house, but I am not sure that it really fixed the problem. :( What happens if I become a responsible adult? Maybe it’s just a phase and I will get over it.

In complete contrast, Max will never grow up. Today, as I was in the garage messing with paint when I heard Max yacking in the corner. I was just happy that he was yacking in the garage and not on the carpet. As I continued to stir the paint he continued to wretch. Then it seemed like he had been wretching for an unusual amount of time. Heading over to investigate, I find him sniffing a soggy cricket. Then it all clicked into place and I just started laughing while envisioning Max swallowing a live cricket and then choking the wriggling insect back up. Never a dull moment. And speaking of never growing up, I found these pictures of Max as a puppy.

Isn’t he just the cutest thing you ever saw? The other puppy is his sister. Now, when ever Max annoys me, I am going to look at this picture, because who can be annoyed with that puppy face?

New Art

These are some pictures of some new art pieces that I have been working on. They are water color on rice paper, saturated with wax to give them a stained glass look. The stained glass look doesn't really come through on the picutres, but is really neat. Anyway, please let me know what you think about them. I might try to submit them as greeting cards after I paint a few more, so any feedback is appreciated.

New House Pictures

Some people have been asking for more house pictures, so here are some final pictures.

Living Room































Office/Library


Dining Room and curtains






























New paint in outer bathroom. I like the trim color and will probably continue it throughout the whole bedroom.




Cool sky over the house...