The key to keeping your head when looking for a job is to relax and maintain a positive outlook. I read that on a career-advice blog somewhere. I can't remember which one. I've looked at a lot of them over the past seven weeks. So, with a goal of not stressing out, I've been finding ways of keeping busy. Here are a few of them. (Okay, ten, because you know by now that I think in tens.)
1. Play with Diafol. This is actually a multipurpose activity. Playing with a kitten is a natural de-stressor. It also serves to tire him out so he sleeps through the night. And when Diafol sleeps, we all sleep better. And by we, I mean me, Drew, and Brittany, who seems to live here now. I can't really complain about her staying here. Drew was nice enough not to complain about Diafol. Though Diafol never takes a 25-minute shower and uses up all the hot water, so it's not an exact like-for-like comparison.
2. Clean the apartment. This is another two-bird-one-stone pastime. Not only does it take your mind off whatever it was on, it also ingratiates you to your roommate(s), which might come in handy when your severance runs out and you need a little leeway when it comes to paying the rent. You should see our refrigerator now. Remember that Seinfeld episode where Jerry hires a friend of a friend to clean his apartment and he even gets the little egg cups in the fridge door shiny clean (and swipes a statue)? That's our refrigerator now. It all started with me knocking over a half-full bottle of orange cream soda. (I would blame the idiot who put an uncapped bottle back in the fridge, but that was also me.) It's hard to pretend you didn't notice orange soda cascading down from the top shelf all the way to the veggie crisper drawer. A quick sponge job only made all existing crud stand out more. So shelf by shelf I took everything out and deep cleaned. It looks brand new.
3. Mahjong Titans. Yeah, I'm not proud of this one. Violates one of my New Year's resolutions not to waste time on pointless crap. But it is relaxing, no denying that.
4. Cooking. Eating out is expensive. I figured I'd stretch the budget a little by making dinner for Laurel here. So far I've made broccoli cheddar soup and eggplant parmesan. Neither have been a disaster, but I have left room for improvement. The broccoli came out hard in the soup. I didn't cook it long enough beforehand, apparently. The eggplant had the opposite problem. It was soggy. Tasted fine, but the texture was lacking. Laurel was polite enough to eat it anyway. I might try it again sometime to see if I can get it right. Then again, maybe I won't. The final tally for all the ingredients, plus the makings for salad, plus dessert came to just over $60. Maybe we'll just go out next time.
5. The Handmaid's Tale. Brittany got the first two seasons on DVD for Christmas. I've already seen more of it than she and Drew have. Shhh. It's creepy good. I read the book back in college, and it's just like it, at least the first season. It's really depressing at times, even more so because somedays it feels like we're on the brink of dystopia for real. But I can't stop watching it.
6. Reading. Speaking of my resolutions, I'm already ahead of schedule on my goal of reading 50 books in 2019. I've already finished The Lady in the Lake and The Big Sleep, and I'm four chapters into Farewell, My Lovely. I struck a Raymond Chandler goldmine at one of my favorite used book shops the week after Christmas. Five of his novels, all in nearly perfect condition, two bucks apiece. They almost certainly came from the same collection. I can't figure out why anyone would have parted with them, but I'm not complaining. Their sacrifice is my gain.
7. Hocus Focus. You remember those old puzzles where you have to find six difference between the two pictures. In the first one the woman's skirt has four stripes, in the second it only has three. In the first one she has a purse over her shoulder, in the second one it's missing. I always loved those when I was a kid. My fifth grade teacher used to photo copy them and hand them out when we had indoor recess. I found two books of them the day I bought the Chandler books. You could argue these violate the same time-wasting resolution as Mahjong, but what a trip down memory lane.
8. Editing the second book. This is trickier than the first one so far because I have to go back and forth between my old blog posts and my old email. On the first pass I'm including everything, but some of it is just so mundane I don't think it will make the final cut. I'm into December now, starting from the first week of school. I don't want to give anything away, but ... ugh, Homecoming. What an awful week.
9. Checking my sales on the first book. If you got some kind of award for most times checking sales figures between actual sales, I would be a serious contender for that. The watched pot never boils and the maniacally refreshed sales counter never goes up. Well, it does a little. Just often enough to keep me coming back for another click.
10. Blogging. This is another resolution, only this is one I'm keeping. Mostly. I aimed to write one a week. This may be my first of the year, but technically I did do one last week, even if it was still in 2018.
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