Tag Archives: ellensburg

Speaking of Earthquakes

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Lately I haven’t been posting as frequently as I used to, because it doesn’t feel like much happens around here. I go to work every day, I hang out with Eric and Jill a lot, and that’s about it. I’ve been rereading MicroSerfs, though, and I’m filled with the desire to post short, humorous stories about things that happen to me and the people I know, but not a lot has been happening.

For anyone who’s interested, the earthquake in Olympia did effect us here in Ellensburg. According to my dad, it was measured at 4.8 in Portland, and I think we got about the same here. It was a long (nearly a minute) side-to-side motion, and afterward, they evacuated all the buildings on campus to check for damage.

Speaking of earthquakes, lately, it seems to be a trend among people we know to ask when Annie and I are getting married. I guess when you date someone for nearly three years, and you’re not in high school anymore, everyone assumes that’s what’s next. The funny thing is that it doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. I think Annie and I will get married at some point, but it’s not like we’ve made firm plans about it. We do joke about what our wedding will be like, though.

The other day, in fact, as Annie and I were watching Friends, and they were talking about weddings, we started talking about it, and she casually mentioned that maybe she didn’t even want a minister at ours.

“We just say our own vows. It’s really romantic,” she said. Now, I’m fairly open about what she wants at our wedding. My take on the whole thing is that this a mostly for her, so let her do what she wants with it. And while neither one of us is very religious, and we don’t want a huge god-fearing ceremony, I do want someone to run the ceremony. As I told Annie, without a minister, it’s basically just a party, not a wedding (yes, I know legally we would still be married, but that’s not the point).

Not Very Scrawny

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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as skinny as I was in high school. I am no longer a 98 pound weakling. No, now I’m a 170 pound weakling. Sadly, all of this weight has gone on right around my middle giving me a bit of a gut. Naturally, I’m not terribly pleased with this, but I’m not so disgusted by my appearance to start doing anything drastic to fix it either. I’m a long way from fat.

However, while it is true that I’m not as skinny as I used to be, I am SICK of people I barely know commenting on it! One time, at work, I wore my “chicks dig scrawny pale guys” shirt, and my boss of less than a month, who I barely knew, walked up and said “Not very scrawny, though, are you?” I was shocked that he felt comfortable saying this, but accepted it as the joke it was probably intended as, though I did rant a bit about it to my friends at the time. This has happened to me a couple times now, and I don’t like it, but the worse one yet happened yesterday. A guy from the radio station, who I know only by association (basically, we just know each other’s names) and I are sitting around waiting for the rest of the people in the large group to show up, and I say that I’m hungry, and I say “We should order a pizza. Several pizzas!” I was joking. Not my best joke, but still…

“You look like you’ve already had too many pizzas.” He remarked. I was absolutely stunned. “excuse me?” and “fuck you!” were two responses that ran through my mind before he then leaned forward and asked “I mean, what are you, 23?” I was so shocked all I could do was nod. It sucks because I should have told him to shut the hell up, or at least said something, but I was so startled that he had the nerve to say something that rude to me that I just sat there and took it.

Moving Back to Portland

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We might be moving back to Portland this summer, instead of next summer, as we had originally planned. The situation here is a lot rougher than either of us had thought it would be. The job market is terrible. Annie’s still unemployed, and my boss has cut my hours back so much that we’re barely able to cover bills. After my money from the Myst3 job runs out, we won’t be able to cover them unless Annie finds a source of income. So that’s one reason. In addition, Annie is “not excited” about school next year. She says that it might make sense to move back to Portland, because then she could do Americorps for another year, and then finish up school down there, at PSU. And on top of all that, we can’t deny that one of the reason is that nearly all of our friends are moving this summer. Urn and Kat will be leaving, and so will Eric and Jill. Becky and Jessi will still be here, but we barely see them anyway.

We talked about it for a long time last night, and it’s sounding better each time we talk. The only problem is that unless the money situation improves a lot, and quickly, enabling us to get some money saved, when we move back, we won’t actually have enough money to move into an apartment right away. We’ll probably have to move into my parent’s house for a little bit while we both find jobs and get enough money cached to pay first month’s rent, plus security and cleaning deposit.

We still need to check a few things out, like if moving early breaks our lease, or if we can just take off in the summer, and whether Annie can get another job in Americorps. Still, the job market in Portland is so much better than here, that even if we both had to take crummy mall jobs or something, we’d be okay. Plus, Portland means that I could try to get a graphic design job, or even get involved in web design!

It’s all still up in the air, and basically it’s Annie’s decision, but we’re checking out our options.

In addition to all that, I finally realized that my cousin Deni married the lead singer of the Ataris, a band that I like. When my family told me that Deni had married a rock star, I kinda rolled my eyes, and even when I met him, I didn’t place the name of the band. But Annie and I were on the radio and played two songs by his band that I know, and love! So suddenly it all fell into place! Cool!

Jester called me and told me he has no idea why my second check from the Myst3 job hasn’t gotten to me, and that he also has no idea why the themes aren’t up on the site yet. Apparently both should have been done quite a while ago. As soon as I know what’s up, I’ll post about it.

Work Troubles

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HOORJ. I am frustrated. I got in trouble at work today. Not bad trouble, but my boss has warned me twice (once kinda sneakily) that I’m spending too much time on the Net at work, and today he announced that he’s disconnecting my computer from the network. I’ve got no grounds to argue with him, since that computer doesn’t have to be on the network, but it’s a crummy thing to do, especially since the last time he mentioned that he thought I was on the net too much was like three months ago. I wish he would have given me more warning that he was that close to doing something like this. I dunno, I mean I understand where he’s coming from with not wanting to pay for me to goof off, but the way I feel is that if I do my job well, get all my work done in a timely fashion (which I do) then I should be allowed a little slack. He feels differently. Yet another reason I wanna get out of this shit town and back to a place where more people share my opinions.

In addition to that, Urn and I did a really bad show last night, and the station manager told us so. He’s right, but when you did the best you could and still failed it kinda sucks to have someone critisize it. We were trying something new, and it bombed, unfortunately. Oh well… we’re gonna try twice as hard for the next show and hopefully have better results.

Agggh. On the one hand, I hate getting criticism, because it makes me feel bad, and on the other hand, I hate when people don’t tell me, like my boss. You know, I wanna know if someone has a problem with me so I can work on it, but at the same time, I hate when people have a problem with me, because then I feel like shit.

Ooog. Enough ranting.

Good News and Bad

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Hmmm… I’m not sure how to feel lately. I’ve had one great thing happen and one potentially horrible thing happen.

Bad News First:
I came into work the other day and my bosses asked me to talk to them. They told me that money was tight, and business was slow, and would I mind going home each day as soon as I finish my work, instead of staying the whole 8 hour shift. Now, I understand where they’re coming from, and I’d almost rather go home than have them find more grunt work for me to do, but this is very bad timing. Basically, they’re kicking me back down to 20 hours a week, and Annie’s still unemployed. This means we can’t pay bills. So basically, we’re back to square one, poverty-level income, no spending money, stress about jobs, and not knowing whether we’ll still be living in Ellensburg in two months. Thanks to the money from the Myst3 job, I’ve got this month’s bills payed guaranteed, and also I managed to find out I can get a forbearance on my loans. But next month is up in the air. Annie’s taking it more seriously and applying at a few more jobs, but next week she’ll have to apply at Jack In The Box if no one’s already hired her. If things get really bad, I might have to think about getting a second job, but I want to make sure I’m available for those days when there is enough work for me to stay all day. The worst thing about this situation is not knowing what’s going to happen. We’ve got to live minute to minute, with very little possibility to plan ahead, which is extremely frustrating for me.

The Good News
I fixed my computer! Ever since I bought it, the sound on my system hasn’t worked. The motherboard has a built-in sound card, and I even bought another sound card just in case. But nothing I did helped, and the Asus, the company that built the motherboard, wouldn’t answer any questions. After this long, I had just about given up, and was getting ready to buy a new motherboard when I found another post on the tech support forums. Turns out another guy with the same motherboard and case that I have found out that one of the mounting screws that attaches the motherboard to the case was touching the circuits and causing a short. It’s not a needed mounting screw, so I removed it and my sound IMMEDIATELY started working. It’s such a stupid problem that I’m amazed I didn’t figure it out, but I’m so happy to have my computer completely functioning that I moved on and started installing games and stuff.