Sigh. That's all I have to say about this morning. I don't want to go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that I did not get the freelance factchecking job I applied for at the College Board.
Rather than bore you to death with my self-pity, which is, I assure you, voluminous, I'll summarize: I can't even get a job I was personally recommended for. How sad is that?
So here is the promised picture of the new kitchen floor, shown here still in progress. You can see the fancy linoleum in there already, but the wooden baseboards are still in a pile at the right of the picture. Everything is now in and hunky dory. It actually hides dirt rather than just looking sort of dirty on its own, like the white tile did.
And here's a sort of blurry picture of the hallway fridge, which was convenient for beer when watching television (not unlike Chris's setup) but made our house into a "no fat people" zone. All in all, having the fridge in the kitchen, where it belongs, has been much better, despite having to walk into another room for our refreshments. It's not like it would have been very good during parties, either. Our house is just not set up for very many guests at one time. Sure, we've got the second bathroom, but our living room is kinda small. We only have a two-person couch and the cat has totally taken over the easy chair. (I don't mean she peed on it or anything. She just sees it as her personal chaise longue.) It just isn't a huge room, especially once you put a large HDTV and a spinet piano in it.
It's sad. I haven't practiced the piano much lately. I got very motivated to for a while, and then I accidentally was overheard by our friend David, who is a music professor (guitar). He made what he intended to be helpful practice-related suggestions but I ended up feeling totally discouraged. I'm not an exceptional musician or anything, and at this point in my life I just play for enjoyment. I don't even really like having an audience, except for Rob, because mostly I'm out of practice and make a lot of mistakes. The current piece I'm trying to relearn is Mozart's Sonata in C Major. But I think I last practiced two weeks ago, which isn't good.
This just tripped me the hell out. While doing housework, I was watching the only interesting television available on a Sunday afternoon--G4 TV's Icons series about videogame icons such as Donkey Kong and Mario--and who did I see but Peer Schneider and Matt Casamassina, former co-workers from IGN. Sigh. That really made me nostalgic for the good old days. I know they both worked at IGN back before it was Snowball, and apparently they're still there. They were good guys.
I remember Rob (being the totally obsessive video gamer that he is) was the only person the folks at IGN64 had heard of who had actually gotten to the closing animation of Donkey Kong 64, so they had me bring him in so he could play the ending for them and they could record it. Those were the days.
I got my very first actual phone call from a publisher today. And I was not at home. Of COURSE.
I'm still excited, though. This call was from the people who are going to publish the YA anthology in which my third-prize-winning short story will be included. So, no matter how you look at it, it's cool. Except that she said she's going to call back tomorrow afternoon, when I already KNOW I'm not going to be home. But I think this is a good enough reason to change our answering machine message, don't you? I'll just stay glued to my cell phone all afternoon. In fact, I think I'll just go charge it now, just in case. (It's old and retarded and runs out of juice now after, like, two phone calls. One call, if it's my mom.)
After a really kind of crappy day--mainly due to my mood than anything tangible--I had an excellent online chat with my writing group and feel quite a bit more cheerful.
We--the group--have this bright idea that we're going to put together our own anthology of YA short stories and try to get it published. We put our heads together to create a fictional town on the California coast, where all of the stories will be set. That's the only guideline. We're two stories in so far, and so far, so good. It's very exciting.
