ode to unemployment

after bitching through january, employment came knocking on my door. if you note the lack of facebooking, tweeting and blogging, you may realize that i really am exhausted and too busy for such things i loved so much before. here i sit, four weeks down in the good ol work place and i’d like to tell you about what i miss, because damn, i did not take advantage of unemployment like i should have; well, wait, maybe i did, but now that i had a taste of the sin of slothyness, being without it is oh so harsh.

MY ODE TO UNEMPLOYMENT

GET DOWN WITH LAZINESS

the amount of tv i watched during unemployment was borderline embarrassing. nah, i’ll just call it making up for lost time... yeah definitely not embarrassing. barely watching tv the last four years, deserved a few months of turning my brain to mush via showtime, mtv, cbs sitcoms and every show in between…seriously.  dexter: 4 seasons down in few quick weeks. californication: tore through 3 of the seasons in less than a month, began watching multiple shows every night, faithfully (no soap operas, mind you, but i did watch those occasionally while i was at the gym during lunch time), rewatched all of it’s always sunny in philadelphia and that’s not even it, but i’ll just give you that to save what is left of my diminishing dignity.

oh, can’t forget about the history channel: gangland, ancient aliens, modern marvels, just to name a few, which all contributed to my laziness and then craziness to follow. the cooking channel: hi, show me food, i’m not going to cook it, but i’ll stare and salivate for half hour while you try to teach me something and i’ll just continue to get hungrier.

I'M SO UNCOMFORTABLE

if you know me, you probably can picture me in sweat pants and some quirky shirt i picked up at goodwill. that’s my thing; i will rock stupid and totally irrelevant-to-me t-shirts, shamelessly, all day every day and i wish i still could. i am just not a dress up every morning person and here is why: i have really shitty hair, it goes flat at about 8:05 so that’s a good look to keep up until 5pm, sorry customers you will have absolutely no eye candy while you're working with me. sorry i'm not sorry. and i think i just reject looking nice. no matter how many times i iron or dry clean something i ends up getting wrinkly or stained midday. i swear i'm giving looking nice my best effort, but i guess it just isn't sticking.

also, dry shampoo is a saint. sure i’ll snooze my alarm a few more times and then spray this on my head so it looks like i took the time to shower this morning. bing bang boom, my hair is still challenged, at best, but at least it looks like i tried.

COMMUNICATION WITH THE REAL WORLD

now that i’m not close to any of my friends (geographically) i get so many fewer texts, facebook posts and tweets. because i need more reason to feel like a real person?? Come on people, send me a drunk text about how some townie is hitting on you at the bar or that you woke up at your ex boyfriend’s place, pissed off in the morning… man, i miss those. at least i have gotten too lazy to unsubscribe to job search sites and i get daily e-mails; i look forward to hearing from you, daily, communicationsjobs.com and monster, my most faithful friends, want to hang out sometime?

on the subject of communication with the real world, i really have gotten quite lame since working. i’m now transitioning into a more mature place in my life, which is fantastic, but i do miss the debauchery of college and pre-unemployment.  all i want to do is sleep and sleep, not quite how my weekends used to be, but i'm managing. 

i also miss late nights and late afternoons; my time of sleep and my time of waking for the last four years. my mind works best late at night, giving me some of my best ideas for writing, but i guess we all have to make sacrifices to soldier on in the real world, right?

look at this transition... success?

so i leave you with this, i am extremely thankful for all my new opportunities, learning a lot, enjoying moving forward in my life, but if you have free time, savor it while you can.

cheers!

so this is the new year?

hi, hello- welcome to 2011. it's a solid week-ish into the new year and i've made some observations, been in some comical situations and other things i just feel like rambling about to you.

seriously, ben gibbard said it best "so this is the new year, and i don't feel any different. so this is the new year, and i have no resolutions, for self assigned penance, for problems with easy solutions". i feel exactly the same, ben. (we talk about the new year together, obviously) as i noted in an earlier post, i don't really make any "new year's resolutions" i think they are silly and making one would just make me more apt to break it so i will continue to just try to do things better. i've added to my list since my post about it. i've added on: be less lazy and be more responsible. two things i could definitely be better at. so far, they're going alright (besides the day i spent watching 'ancient aliens' on the history channel from about 2pm until 7pm... oops (and seriously i may be convinced that there are aliens now. sweet, unemployed and crazy.))

i spent the holidays in florida. it was pretty great, nice to get away from the blizzards in michigan and spend some time by the ocean with my family and my second family (my best friend and her fam). ate some delicious seafood, hung out on the beach, got to see my sisters who live down south, went to the wizarding world of harry potter to embrace my inner nerd. good times were had by all.

my holiday "break" was fantastic, overall, except it's not really a break for me anymore, since my whole life is a break (insert something about unemployment). i've gotten to see a lot of friends who only come here when holidays need celebrating because let's be real, even though it's 2011, this is still not a happening spot. a lot of my friends are guys, because, besides my close knit group of gal pals, i'd rather hang out with dudes.. "bro out" if you will. put too many females together and shit turns out like that show bad girls club and that just isn't for me. 
 
firstly i'd like to give a little shout out to my friends meg and jordan. meg will be moving to la after she graduates in may, to do baller hollywood-ish things. jordan just got accepted into the peace corps and will be in africa, making the world a better place for 27 months. i'm gonna miss em. but for now i'll just cherish this picture of us tailgating, because let's be honest, those were the best of times.

my good friend blair and i have been buds since we were little, like really little. we used to hang out because our grandparents are friends, cute, i know. blair was a little bit rambunctious compared to me. he compared the two of us like this: "you were such a pleasant little child, playing in the water and building sand castles, i was swearing, burning ants and stealing gum from the gas station on my tricycle." hey, at least my friends are entertaining and drama free, but hopefully we'll just stay away from the juice filled gum when we stop in to fill up on gas. 


another good friend of mine, from college, took a little road trip over the holiday to good ol' pasadena, california. you guessed it, rose bowl. my friend andy, wisconsin native, lover of america's dairy land gave me all the highlights of the road trip. my favorite was his leg through liberal, kansas, home of the liberal bee jay's baseball team. if that team isn't the butt of many jokes, it is now... don't worry i already checked out their website, they currently are sold out of merchandise, but you better believe i'll be checking back with them. popular team, i tell ya. on andy's much sadder return trip he called me while driving solo back to good ol valparaiso, indiana. "i've got four cases of beer and a block of cheese in my trunk." on wisconsin.


in other news new year news; i've made some solid gym observations. the first of the year always sparks interest for people to finally get into shape. for my gym, there are lots of characters who have been around since the new year began. 
exhibit a) lady who wears nice sweaters, big 80's style scrunchies and knit leggings, at least she remembered her gym shoes. flashdance?
exhibit b) older guy who thinks he's super studly that has a barbwire tattoo from his wrist all the way to just below his armpit... whatya protecting up there with that barbed wire, brahhh?
exhibit c) numerous people who have obviously never set foot in a gym, i give it a month, happy new year, thanks for coming out, better luck next year.


in some totally unrelated news, i started writing occasionally for a music company (veoba.com), if you enjoy my taste in music/my writing style you should check it out. it's a really cool company so maybe you can find something you like on there.

also, i updated a bio page, located in the right hand corner of my page "halbs in a nutshell" check it out, it has all sorts of useful/not useful information.

ta ta for now.