Who the heck do I think I am?

...And I just had to do a complete system restore. Back to factory-new.

Argh.

So much for installing Sonar on this computer!

I might be able to contact Cakewalk (maker of Sonar) and find another product to use with my microphone. Dangit.

But it's better than the computer being stuck without anything that makes it--well, a computer.

Am reinstalling printers and wallpapers and Chrome and....

That was a thoroughly embarrassing audition.

I don't expect a callback.

I hate not being able to dance like a dancer anymore.

Ah, well. Moving on.

(In other news, I am the worst daughter ever, For the first time I can recall I did not talk to my mother on her birthday. Oops. I did call her - only four days late. Oops.)

This is the first year I've been on Facebook for my birthday. So many people "wrote" on my "wall" - I feel a little lame about it. Is there some kind of rule that says you have to wish everyone on FB a happy birthday? Do I now "owe" all those people birthday greetings?

I'm not good at that. That's a tremendous amount of pressure! There's a reason I don't send Christmas cards or give presents at the office (when I have one). It's not that I don't appreciate it, but I'm bad at reciprocating. And furthermore, I'm just not sure how to deal with that kind of attention.

It's quite a contrast to the year when I was in a new job, so no one knew it was my birthday, I had a rehearsal that night and no one there knew it was my birthday, and I got stopped on the way home for speeding. I didn't say anything to the cop, either, but he can't have failed to see from my license that it was, in fact, my birthday. In fact, I think that's the only reason he made it a warning instead of a ticket. As he handed my my license and registration and the paperwork back, he said, "Happy Birthday" - and as I drove away, that's when I started getting misty. It was 11:30 PM on my birthday and he was the first person all day to acknowledge it.

Not that I make a habit of feeling sorry for myself on birthdays. My family really just doesn't make a big deal out of them. From the time I was about 13, my idea of a birthday celebration was to go out with family friends and maybe have cheesecake for dessert. I didn't have big parties, because among other things, in Rochester in February, you've got a high probability that everyone you invite will be sick, or the weather will be so bad you have to cancel. And nowadays I'm nearly always in a rehearsal on my birthday (at least the last 4 years!), so making plans is just not big on the list.

OTOH, I'm still having a little trouble with this birthday just passed. I know I'd have less of an issue if my job situation were not what it is. But even without that... I never thought I'd be my age and still so far behind on everything. I found out the other day that at least two people in the show, whom I thought were older (not by much, but a little bit!) than I am, are actually younger - one by a year and one by four years. Yikes. It makes me feel rather pessimistic.

I have received one very odd present... One of my birthday twins sent a DVD because, as he put it, even though he's also out of work and shouldn't be spending the money, this was "a gem" that I would "appreciate." It's called The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Apparently it's a spoof of B movies. Er. Okay....


Meanwhile, I have to take action tomorrow with the temp agency because my W-2 was supposedly mailed on 1/21 and I still haven't received it. I also want to follow-up on the jobs I interviewed for - I think a week is a good length of time to wait without making contact - and gently push to see if I can make sure they know I'm still very interested. I'm also planning to call Unemployment on Wednesday and see if I can file a claim for the temp stint. Even if it's only a few buck a week, it's something.

I've been working at the theatre (and will continue to do so next week) building sets. Yesterday we had to clean the place because they're renting it tonight - so we had to put all the set-building stuff onstage behind the traveler curtain and completely clean / reset the house for the event, clean the bathrooms, etc. And it turns out that the older gentleman who does most of their set-building and maintenance used to work for Universal! We got into a long discussion about the parks and the rides. He was there for 10 years - though I don't know if anyone he knew there still works there. I'd still like to work there, dangit. I wish there were a tailor-made job for me.... Maybe it's time to check in on that again, too.

In other news, the computer is still hanging in there (knock wood), although the case is now really pulling apart at the seam. There's a strip of plastic that's supposed to sit between the top of the case and the DVD-ROM drive that is now free-floating. The DVD still works, but it rattles while the disc is turning. But I'm glad it still works because I've got 4 more episodes of Doctor Who (series 5) still to watch (and they don't work in the DVD player in the TV)....

Speaking of watching things, Netflix brought me Ponyo this weekend. Adorable! And so definitely Miyazaki. But that song at the end? ROTFL. And all I could think was that it is quintessentially Japanese, somehow. These are the same people who brought the world Sushi TV.

Yes, my life is Soooo Exciting, everyone!

This Christmas was a holiday of hand-me-down electronics. I got a GPS from Joel that had been his mother's, and then from my mother I brought back her old DVD player. It was the better of her two - I kept asking her if she'd rather we hook up that one to her bedroom TV and I'd take the lesser model - but she kept saying it made no sense.

Last night when I got home from Rochester and opened the back to unload, the DVD player slid straight out and fell on the pavement. On its face, of course. Which meant that the faceplate cracked in about five places.

At first I didn't even realize it was cracked. (Hey, it was dark outside.) But when I did realize it, I plugged it in anyway to check on it, and it turned on and the tray would open and close, but I wasn't ready to test it with a DVD because it didn't make sense to do that until I had it plugged in to a TV.

Well, this morning I got it hooked up to the TV and got it wired through the VCR... and the little "standby" light came on. But it won't stay powered up. When I click the remote power button, it comes on for a moment, displays "Sony DVD" and then shuts itself back off.

ARGH.

I feel really dumb for not making sure the thing was well secured (or for not opening the glass to get it out), or for just putting it on the back seat. It was 5-6 years old, but it was pristine, basically. And now it's toast.

It's old enough that I'm sure Sony wouldn't do anything about fixing it - and I'm sure it would cost just as much to replace the front as it would to just buy a new machine. Well. I've lived without a player back there this long so there's no rush to do that. It's just very disappointing to have broken the damn thing in the first place.

Unless anyone has suggestions for another way to fix it? I don't know what happened between last night and this morning that it suddenly won't run.

Gah.


ETA: First off, the whole faceplate has basically come off now. And second - a little research online shows that it would cost a minimum of $120 to get it fixed ($137 to exchange it through Sony). And used identical models on Amazon start at $25.99 (plus shipping)... And of course there are about 14 newer models for under $75.

The point being that I won't be doing anything about it for the time being, but when I do feel like it there are cheaper alternatives to getting it fixed.

I just received a notice of termination from the Census. Their reason? Lack of work.

Hello? You never SCHEDULED me to work, you fuckwits! How am I supposed to report for work if you never TELL me when you want me to come in?

I mean. Okay. The job was shit. But it would have been a little tiny bit of income. It might have helped extend my unemployment benefits a couple weeks here and there. And plus? I've never been "terminated" from a job in my life. Bastards.


On the bright side, my landlord just brought up the A/C unit!! So I will have a cooled-off bedroom by bedtime! W00T.

1. No hat. Sigh. I'll just get another one from CafePress at some point.

2. Looking at the shows I wanted to audition for.... WHAT?! Everyone has moved to April performances instead of March???? GAH.

Seriously. "Singin' in the Rain" is the first three weeks of April, fine. But the other companies with shows I'd like to go out for - Weston, Netwon, Longwood - they're all putting up their spring shows in mid-late April, too, instead of March. Argh.

Well, okay - Concord Players is doing 'Scarlet Pimpernel' in the last two weeks of April / first week of May. Doable. Difficult, but doable. (Schedules audition....)

And there's always the school of thought that says audition anyway - get a better part and drop, but that's somewhat unprofessional.


3. My dad just got a traffic ticket in Georgia. He says he came to a T-intersection and in one of those "oh, why not?" moments blew through it to try to get through before the car coming in the other direction...only to realize too late that said car was a cop. Yeah. (Sounds VERY similar to my ticket that I argued away when I blew through the yellow light by going *right past* a cop who was already stopped at the light....)

Oh, well, it happens. Well, it happens to anyone who drives as much as me or my dad. But no one wants to make a habit out of it!


4. I'm so bored at work....

I've been flirting with my job search for a few weeks, easing into looking, since, y'know, I have until the end of the year.

Except I don't.

I got a one-month's notice today - November 27, instead of end of December.

This sucks for a couple reasons, including that old "finding a job at the holidays" deal, one month less salary, and not least because if I'd been in 'til year-end, I might have been able to convince them to extend it by a week or two into January, to fully vest in the pension plan. As it is, my boss tells me he's going to have to "fight" for a decent severance package, let alone any kind of credit for time to vest in the retirement... which means I might lose the money I have been paying in. Argh. This happened at Mt Auburn, too - where I left about a month before I was eligible to keep the retirement benefits.

I'm so tired of having to look for work every year.

Mainly I have to remember that a. I knew this was coming, and this just moves up the timetable; b. every time before when this has happened, while it may be rough for a while, I've come out with a better job than I had before; c. this is an opportunity to work on other aspects of life - and not to get distracted nor discouraged.

I've been applying for jobs. You may have noticed me ping you on "linked in". I may cave and get a Facebook (though I may not).

I've got a list of things to take care of this month - dentist, some memberships, etc. - and I just knocked a list of stuff off my wish list - and I need to pay down the bills STAT, even if it means withdrawing a bit of savings to do it.

Man, I just HATE job-hunting. Why can't I just get discovered and land a string of leading roles, star in a movie or two, and oh, yeah, come up with an idea for a novel that will hold together for more than half a chapter?

Stupid Post Office changed its hours.

They used to be open until 7.

Now they close at 6.

GRRRRR.

I drove out there with boxes. They are now still in my car.

Not Amused.

So, I got the link from iTunes last night, even though it was late, because I was at rehearsal when heidi8 called me about it, and I wound up having to call her at home (sorry!) because my Yahoo!Messenger kept crashing (grrr...). But she emailed me the iTunes link, and I downloaded it, and ran around and took my trash out while it was loading....

And it wouldn't play right. This is the same thing that happened when I broke down and bought "Roadkill" from iTunes because I couldn't get it any other way.

The picture freezes. The audio freezes, then picks up again after a delay of anywhere from 1-10 seconds. But here's the annoying thing: the audio *acts* as if it hasn't stopped playing. So it skips ahead. Then the pictures kind of skip around, too, so it's like a poorly timed, poorly scored slideshow instead of a video.

I even took time to update iTunes to the newest version, restarted the computer... same deal.

I managed to get *about* halfway through before midnight, at which point I had to give up.

If this happened with any downloaded .mp4 on my computer, I would blame my video and sound cards. But it only seems to happen when I download something *directly* from iTunes.

Anyone else ever have this problem?

This does NOT bode well for the rest of the season, people! I'm not going to be able to watch the episodes until "Stepping Out" is over - mid-November - and then if I get cast in something else over the winter/spring, which I really hope to be, I'll have the same problem again: rehearsals on Thursday nights.

I was just going to get the ep's from iTunes... but not if this is what's going to happen every time.

ARGH.

I'm going to see if I can load iTunes on the laptop and migrate stuff to it - maybe it *is* my computer, but at this point, all I really care about is being able to watch my show.


ETA: There is joy in Mudville... loading iTunes and d/ling the ep on the laptop worked just fine.

So I think it's probably the CPU speed on the other computer, really.

But at least I have a plan for the season....