Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

1) Weekend temps tapped at the mid-'80s, which for this part of Maine is kind of weird. We only have one air conditioner put up right now, partly because we haven't needed more and partly because the living room window is directly below the drainpipe which means cramming towels behind the couch every time it rains. Pondering solutions before July hits.

2) Since The Godfather last week was such a success, last night we gave The Godfather Part II a test drive. Fun fact: if you accidentally start on disc 2, the movie is very confusing. "Who's the weird senator dude? Why is De Niro whispering at that old guy in Sicily and then gutting him like a lake trout? WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO FREDO??"

3) We're making an attempt to buy our food from farmshare and the farmers' market whenever possible, which meant a nice chicken pesto pappardelle last night and a gorgeous roast chicken today. I am so on board.

4) I have to go to the office tomorrow. I do not want to go to the office tomorrow.

5) The Great Pottery Throw Down is good for the soul.

• I tried an experiment recently to cut out sugar for the duration of my work day, since I was hitting a two-cocoas-and-a-fistful-of-cookies habit, not counting random donut drop-ins. I did great, eschewing the cocoa and the cookies and even the coworker's chocolate collection, then looked down at an office fun fair to discover that I'd downed 3/4 of a bag of cotton candy without questioning it. Well, dammit. I paid for it with a twitchy evening and lingering self-loathing. Back to the drawing board.


• I really need to stop volunteering for stuff. My boss just handed me a new revision on the document I gave serious thought to applying a blowtorch to the last time it was assigned to me. I am currently in the habit of drawing skulls and crossbones on Post-It Notes, and this is one of the reasons why.

Matter of fact, it has eaten the time I'd set aside to post a full bulleted list of things, so I'm walking away after a whole two items, both of which I'm trying to forget. Going home to drown my sorrows in chicken nachos and lounging about in my skivvies. Excelsior!

So, hey! I haven't done this since LJ's heyday, I don't think. but since LJ seems to continue burgeoning despite protestations to the contrary this might be a good way to take the community's pulse, as it were, so what the hell.

GIVEN: I've got another hour of work to slog through.
GIVEN: My attention span went kersploosh somethere before lunchtime, along with the cup of coffee that finally put me over the line.
GIVEN: I am, suffice it to say, bored off my ever-lovin' fundament.
GIVEN: There are only so many back episodes of Pop Culture Happy Hour one can consume in a day before one starts sounding frighteningly like Glen Weldon (see also "burgeoning," "protestations," and "fundament" above).

CONCLUSION: Adam needs help.

What I'm saying is: Divert me. Please, for the love of Hannah.

This coming Monday is Memorial Day, which according to my temp agency is an actual bona fide Paid Holiday. Even better, for the first time I've been on the job long enough to qualify! Except, oh would you look at that, I haven't worked enough hours to actually qualify, despite my full-time status. A damned shame all around.

So I took the time to do the math, taking as my baseline their stated minimum number of eligibility work-hours in the last six months, and have determined that one can qualify for paid holidays provided one has successfully avoided all of the following:

* illness
* bad weather
* appointments
* trips
* special occasions
* office closings, including those due to bad weather and/or emergencies
* early departures
* long lunches
* other holidays

The preceding may be possible to mitigate through working overtime, which, by the way, we are not authorized to do. You want to know how bad it is? One of my coworkers is disqualified only because his father was hospitalized a few months ago.

So, yeah, unpaid holiday it is, with a grumbling-and-cussing chaser. Good thing there's only one more of these over the summer.

Such as:

1) Successfully left the house for work at 5 a.m. two mornings in a row while refraining from taking hostages, punching innocent bystanders, or consuming my body weight in Pepsi

2) Had a glorious job interview at Place I Really Want to Work, to be described more fully when I am not recovering from item #1 above

3) Arranged a job interview for second place next week, and got invited to meet at a third

4) Hauled the first carload of stuff to the new place—y'know, essential stuff, like books, DVDs, the mandolin and the dulcimer, and the braid

5) Met the third roommate (does she have an LJ, jasra and majes?), so I can now say with authority that my new roomies all display vast levels of Awesomeness

I have mentioned my job search in passing, and my need for help in same, but I haven't gone into much detail yet about what I'm looking for and what I can offer. The following is a condensed and somewhat casual write-up of what I need, but it should be enough to give an idea of what I'm going for. If you know of an opening or an employer who'd be willing to speak to me, or better yet have some pull or authority in the hiring process, I would be eternally grateful for your time and assistance:

Where: Boston or surrounding environs, especially Cambridge/Somerville/Malden/Watertown/ish

When: As soon as is manageable. Early June would be magnificent, but I'm open to anything at this point.

What I'm looking for: A full-time position in either an office or customer service environment would be preferred. Dream job is something in writing or the editorial field; other good matches would be clerical work, data entry or a call center position, all of which are solidly represented in my background. I don't have much tech experience, but I'm a quick study for positions that don't require a degree in the field. In general, though, I'm not about to be particular, and would be interested to hear about anything that might be available. In short, if it's out there, let me know.

Experience (heavily abridged): My current position is as a data entry clerk and clerical generalist for C&S Wholesalers, a position that started as a three-week contract position but has stretched to over nine months due to my indispensability. Prior experience: 12 years as a call completions operator (i.e. call center person) with Verizon; 2 years as assistant manager for Harold's, a retail clothing outlet; darkroom and digital design for the Freeman's Journal; design and editorial work for Coal Magazine (volunteer); freelance crossword construction and article writing for Games Magazine and the New York Times.

Skills: Typing (65 wpm), 10-key entry (wicked fast), both Mac and Windows OS, MS Office, excellent customer service skills, proofreading and editing for content

Education: Bachelor's in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I can email you a copy of my current resumé, references and and any other info you think would be helpful upon request. Thanks so much for taking the time to look this over, and please drop me a line with any leads that might come along!

Every winter I have this respiratory thing where the inevitable runny nose that lasts a week turns into a raking cough that lasts for two months. That started revving up within the last few, and I was just starting to settle into the been-ther-done-that-ness of it all when my body's disease centers, apparently jealous over the influenza kerfuffle in Boston, decided to kick into overdrive, which is why I'm typing this flat on my back, hoping to dodge the Vomit Train and relying on my memory of the QWERTY keyboard because the dizzy spells are preventing me from focusing properly. Pleh.

I did, however, achieve a Grownup Milestone today by scheduling my very own meeting at work, complete with Microsoft Outlook invites. Yay, said Pinocchio, now I'm a real corporate drone! The meeting actually served its purpose well, which was to give us (read: me) a better grasp on work prioritization so we (read: I) don't have to go through a repeat of the last few days and its endless emails on how badly I borked up my TPS reports. Another yay for productivity (read: absence of bullshit)!

And with that, I'm going to stare at the insides of my eyelids for a while. Be good to each other.

Our office lost one body's worth of man-hours today as coworker Jayson finally decided to walk for good. No one was much surprised. Jayson has an acute case of being a 20-year-old, and he was pretty much wearing the fact that this was his first real job on his sleeve. Chief among his grievances against our employers (along with being made to file things and the hinted-at bitterness that the job was cutting into his World of Warcraft time) was that they were being "unfair" in that they "yelled at him" about missing too many days of work. "That's such bullshit," he told me just before resigning. "I've only missed five or six days, tops."

He started in mid-July.

Other than that, work proceeds swimmingly. I still have no clue how long they intend to keep me on, but I do know that my stint won't end this month, at least, as they've spoken to me about Thanksgiving-week hours. A good sign: with Jayson gone, I can now sit in the corner cluster of desks with the rest of the department, instead of the kids' table by the front door. Today, everyone was gearing up for Halloween, which in our office means the Friday after Halloween, when everyone dresses up thematically and kids of employees come to trick-or-treat after school. This amounted to today being spent by people not involved in hardcore data entry—i.e. people not me—redecorating the office to look like Sesame Street, the chosen theme, and no one actually being dressed up for the actual Halloween, which made me and my top hat feel painfully incongruent. (Most exciting comment received: "Nice hat.")

Blessed Samhain, all.

Fun fact: if you cover the Gin Blossoms' hit "Found Out About You" on an acoustic guitar, slowed way down and in a minor key, it's creepy as hell.

It's a testament to my manager's abilities that I can start off my Monday workday by being told everything I royally banjaxed the previous week, and not spend of the rest of my day hunched over my keyboard sniffling like a despondent blancmange.

I fielded a voice mail this morning from our landlady, informing us that our well has just run dry. I am to gather that this is not good.

Go see Argo. Yes. Do it. If you would prefer to see Pitch Perfect, that's fine, as it weren't bad, neither. But dude, Argo.

The aspect of my current temp position that I like least (aside from a paycheck on the low side of things) is that at the end of the day, I don't have much to talk about. It's business-casual-clad data entry for a food distribution company with basically nice, similarly data-focused coworkers—certainly not bad work, but not the sort of thing that inspires stories that begin, "Ooh! Today at work...." About the best that can be said is that I got them caught up on the particular Data Entry Monster they'd hired me to slay, so they've trained me and set me loose upon a couple other Data Entry Monsters as well as the Karamabloidian It-Beaste of Filinge. Huzzah for diversification.

The one day that I could honestly say was different and borderline-special was yesterday, Labor Day, which I wasn't required to work if I didn't want to, but I needed the salary more than I needed the day off. As it happened, my direct supervisor was the only other person in the whole office to show, so we got to banter and dust off the questionable sailors' vocabulary until she anvil-dropped a fortnight's worth of filing in my lap and skedaddled two hours before my scheduled quitting time. Then it was crank up the Gogol Bordello, pick my nose with gusto, and skip town an hour before the whistle with supervisor's blessing, because "you can go home early if you get done early" is pretty much carte blanche for someone with my wicked date-stamp organizational skills, yo. (I'm pretty sure I was halfway done by the time she made it down to the parking lot.)

It's a three-week assignment, but I'm hoping I can get an extension or possibly even a permanent engagement out of this because these poor sots are simultaneously drowning in paperwork and trying to shore up an employee turnover rate that looks like fans fleeing a stage fire at a Great White concert. [/tacky pop cultural humor] In the meantime, I seem to have reinstated my caffeine addiction, which I'm less than delighted with. One it-beaste at a time, I s'pose.