August 16, 2004

job search continues

Back on the horse you fell off of, as they say. I have been watching a lot of CSI lately (I hope I am not repeating myself, but I am too lazy to go check), and I have been thinking. I know that show is not reality, but it has a lot of real things in it. When I was in college, I got a pre-med degree, major in biology, minor in chemistry. When I didn't end up going to med school, I considered my other options. I didn't want to spend 4 years in med school and extra years in clinicals and as a resident. Silly me. I just wanted to go be a medical examiner, so I started looking around at the next best thing. Crime scene investigator was recommended to me and caught my eye. Again with the lazy, I didn't follow up on it. Now I am.

I can get a masters of science in forensic genetics or in general forensics in 2 years. Very cool, but I need a job now. Why not work while going to school? Not sure I can or want to, at least not full time. Back to the job hunt, because I am qualified for quite a bit. I found that Dallas County is looking for a Trace Evidence Examiner. TINGTINGTING! We have a winner. I applied. Just for grins I applied for the Toxicology Chemist II and Drug Chemist II jobs as well. I am not as interested in them, but I am qualified, surprise, surprise.

See, while I love CSI, I know I would be better back in the lab than in the field. I am more of a Greg than a Sarah. I would love field work, but could work immediately in a lab.

Now to find out whose desk I sit in front of till they hire me....

Life 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

July 27, 2004

is the drought over?

I have a job interview at 1 today. I have a couple of others in the offing, and I found a great copy editing job online this morning.

I'll let you know how it all goes. Yes, I am excited. :)

Life 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 23, 2004

Blame it on the moon

..or on the summer, but I have not been around in a while. I try to get to as many of your blogs in a day as I can, but I have been somewhat busy. Despite what people may think :)

First, I have the possiblity of 3 jobs. One I am waiting to hear on next week, and it involves writing. The second I have to decide on, as it is a part time manager/promoter/assistant for a talented musician/dancer/healer. The third I was called on today and am trying to reconnect with the hiring manager. It is more in my past line of work, even working for a company that does pretty much the same thing my last company did. I don't know exactly in what capacity I would be working for them, what my job description would be, but I think it will be a bit of everything all mixed up into one-and I like that.

I promise more information as any of these solidify. Meanwhile I want to leave you at least for now with this disturbing site. I kinda love it :)

Life 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 09, 2004

life mimics life

I grow plants. Houseplants only, right now, although I have been wanting to plant some herbs and such around the back porch, maybe some lavender at the front door. Here's what I have noticed: when I am doing well, feeling good, my plants are perkier and more lively looking. when I am down or having a hard time, they are droopier, need water and attention more often, and have more dead leaves. I am willing to concede that some of this is perception, and that I have a harder time taking care of them when I am feeling blue, but I can't attribute all of the behaviour to that. I honestly think they pick up on the energy of the house.

Crazy? What have you noticed changes around you when you are happy or sad?

Life 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Friday? Friday? hooray!

Ever had so much to say that the words come tripping out over the tongue and you look like a babbling idiot? That's where I am right now with this post. Where to start? Oh yes, at the beginning. That's what they all say. Well there is no beginning, just a series of random news bits.

First, I have quit the two major minor jobs I was working: tutoring two small children, and working on a web page for someone I used to edit for. These were my biggest excuse/time wasters. Now the work was good, and fun, but as I said before I was using them to show that I was indeed doing something, when in fact what I was doing was not contributing to the overall wellness of my bank account or household. In actuality, I quit the tutoring, and the web page quit me. It all worked out well in the end. I hand off the work done on the web site this afternoon, and my last tutoring session is next Tuesday. Meanwhile, I am checking the heels on my pumps and looking for the phone number of an old friend who is starting an IT department in a new company.

The rest, I promise, won't be LiveJournal fodder :)

Literacy is on the decrease, says an article on Yahoo. I am of two minds on this. On one hand, it upsets me to think we are becoming a less literate nation. Reading isn't seen as important. To be catty, I could say that at one point intelligence was encouraged because only the brightest and best became president. Okay, let's rephrase that to the brightest and best while males with money became president. But it was still a goal, and many kids used becoming president as their brass ring. These days we see that good grades don't matter as much. But I digress, and I may be wrong on that point. It was pure opinion.

On the other hand, this article says book-reading has decreased. This according to a survey. Well often if I am reading a tech manual, I don't consider that "reading" even though I am, in fact, reading. Not only am I reading, I am reading something that requires more comprehension than, say, a murder mystery (which I love). So book/novel reading is on the decline, due to television (yes), movies (ok), and the Internet. Well I don't know about you, but most of what I do on the Internet involves reading. Actually all of it does, and the pictures are there as icing on the cake, so to speak. I realize there are people, many people, who mostly just look at pictures on the Internet (ahem), but I wonder what percentage of picture browsing makes up the entire internet experience.

So while I think this is a good start, I want to see more facts. I want to know not only who is reading books/novels, but also are people reading other things? What about the advent of email causing the increase in people reading and writing letters, previously a lost art form due to the telephone?

I do get frustrated with people's short-cuts in writing. Don't u? I don't like the shorthand that Internet chat rooms spawned. Not one bit. I think it's lazy to not spell out each word. I understand when space is limited or typing is a pain, like in cell phone text messaging, but otherwise...I am prejudiced.


Well I have taken this rant in an entirely different direction than I intended! I guess I just want to tell people to keep reading, keep writing, keep communicating. I'll save the rest of the news links for another post. Time for breakfast!

Life 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 07, 2004

I've been good

I have been doing all kinds of non-computer related things. But I miss catching up with you all, my friends. The final straw was a letter I got in the mail today from Dee, in Uzbekistan! She sent me a lovely postcard, shown here:

Samarkand

Thank you, billy, for showing me the error in my image-posting ways. It works fine now. And I apprently didn't have the card straight on my scanner. This is Samarkand. Gur-Emir Mausoleum. Entrance portal. How cool is that!?


There will be more posting soon. For now I am off to my dance class. When I get back there are quizzes to take and gossip to catch up.

Life 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 03, 2004

Anne, I found us a job!

I read a little comic called Something Positive, by Randall Milholland, native North Texan moved to the northeast. His recent strips are about something he was introduced to probably by one of his readers. Ask The Tech Girl. This service preys on geek boys who could never talk to a smart girl, or any girl for that matter, for any length of time. Call to chat about what *you* know about, or get some help fixing your HP printer, and get an ego boost from a hot tech girl. Whoever came up with this is a genius. I wonder how well it is doing.

Be sure to check out their Cafe Press shop and buy a t-shirt. :)

fun stuff, Humor, Life, Web/Tech 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 01, 2004

the devil made me do it

Welcome to my 666th post! I wanted to have something fiendishly diabolical to say, but I got nothing, folks. Since I have been on semi-hiatus (you know I can't really stay away), much has happened.

First, I took Snowball's compatability quiz. We are quite the pair, would make great friends. Well I knew that already! :) Here are the results:

Congratulations! You're so compatible with
Snowball that she's bound to bond with you. It
might not be true love, but you can at least
have a quality frienship.


How compatible would you be with Snowball?
brought to you by Quizilla

Secondly, I don't know what minor demi-god I pissed off, but yesterday I just broke everything I touched. First I baked a cake for one of my troupe sisters, and I either greased the pan wrong or didn't let it cook long enough, or something, because the cake came to pieces when I removed it from the pans. I tried to icing-glue it together into some semblance of reasonableness, but to no avail.

A picture of the ugly cake, after a failed attempt at frosting it.

uglycake



A view of the pans after I scraped out as much cake matter as possible to put together the Franken-Cake:

cakepans



And last but not least, the cake I bought to replace the monstrosity:

prettycake

The new cake was a chocolate mousse cake, with the mousse being slightly raspberry flavored, yum. The fruit was fresh and delicious. As tasty as the pretty cake was, mine was better, I think. Of course I didn't know that till after I decided it was a bust and dug in with a friend and a couple of forks.

My second trial for the day, or first rather since it happened before the cake fiasco, was a flat tire on Lewisville bridge. I, being the independant woman of the whatevers, started to change the tire myself. Lucky for me, a car that was parked at the lake backed up and three men got out and asked if I needed help. I said yes, please, and called a friend and asked for a phone call in 30 minutes or to come looking for me if I didn't answer. The nice men changed my tire and went on their way, leaving me to drive to Discount Tires and have my tire repaired or replaced.

Discount Tires is The Best Tire Company as far as service goes. Last time I got a flat, I replaced all four tires and bought the lifetime warranty. Yesterday I took my car in and they replaced my tire for free. All I paid for was $13 to update the warranty for the new tire. Within 30 minutes I was back on the road, no hassles and no long wait. I highly recommend Discount Tires' lifetime tire warranty. It covers tire, wheel, rim, all that to be replaced for free.

No moral to the story today, kids, just a day in the life of me. Nothing diabolical. I guess I should really be glad for that! :)


BTW, has anyone figured out how to format the photos so they don't do the funky things in our posts like sit wherever they want despite the html work I put in my post? How frustrating!

Life 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

June 26, 2004

'struth!

I have been lazy. Wallowing. slowly going into hibernation mode. I have been taking excuse jobs to get by just enough to say I am doing something. I have been afraid to go for jobs that I should be able to get. I doubt my abilities and end up wanting to do non-jobs. Things I think will be easy, and I want to do them for that reason rather than because I have much interest in the job itself. Oh, I *think* I want that job sacking groceries at the local health food store, the small one that probably pays its employees just enough to keep the bike tires filled with air. I truly believe I want to work as a clerk in a holistic medical clinic. You know, the one that specializes in myscofaciabilateralmytosis, something throngs of people are clamoring to have done, donchaknow. Uh-huh.

A dear friend kicked my ass recently, and pointed out the decline in my activity over the past three years. I became slowly quieter, less likely to rock the boat. Most importantly, I found The Internet™ and exchanged all my real friends for pixels on a screen.

Now, now, some of you are very nice pixels indeed! and I count you as close as friends who never meet in person can be. This is still, truly, my Third Place. But I gave up some of my living to be here A LOT. I lost interest in doing anything too far away from my computer, and for too long at a time. Most of you probably regulate yourselves just fine with your computer time, but I didn't. It was my alcohol. My cocaine. The internet is the opiate of the masses, perhaps? So that is why I have been slowing down with my posting, at least for a while. Till I can sit here and post something and then not spend hours surfing. Of course, it takes me 3 hours to get through my blogroll and actually respond to posts with comments of my own. Nightly. In place of sleep and other fun things. My Third Place, The Internet™, became my corner bar where I would go and drink myself silly and go home and drop into bed. I hate admitting it. Oh and that job? I'm going to get one. Watch me. But first...one time through the blogroll?

Hello. My name is Alicia, and I am a blogaholic.

it's all about me, Life, Weblogs 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

a night on the town

Last night, oh my god, I ventured away from my computer and comfy chair into the world, and I lived to tell the tale!

A girlfriend of mine and I went to the arts district in Dallas, to the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art to view a members only show. The work was, for the most part, well done and showed great local talent. The members of the DCCA presented their work. I was quite taken with some of the pieces . And inspired. After I finish a birthday sketch, I already have another lined up in the queue.

Afterwards, H and I were going to meet up with some friends at a karaoke bar, after we found some food. We went to Cafe Brazil, and I had the best walnut crusted tilapia on a bed of spinach with a creamy citrus dill sauce. Yum! The karaoke was to take the place of a shindig at the Dallas Museum of Art, because Branford Marsalis was playing at the DMA and getting in was nigh on impossible,

We actually made an early evening of it as H started feeling puny. In theory we will head back down to Deep Ellum next Friday. I kind of like the "real world." :)

On another note, since everyone else is posting these I suppose I will as well...

animealicia

My hair is sun and bleach lightened right now, too much for my tastes. Next time I get it done, I will be going back to my darker color. Is it just me, or do all these little pictures look kind of "off"?

Life 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack