Bit of Ivory

My employer is closing. I’m losing my job. Maybe by the end of the week, definitely by the end of next.

This royally sucks.

I’m so sorry for all of you who don’t live where I do. If I had a TARDIS or a transporter or if we could actually Apparate, I’d make sure you all got to enjoy this day. Seriously, guys, it’s gorgeous out there. And it may be gorgeous where you are, too, but you don’t have Mount Olympus still covered in snow against a sky so blue it almost hurts providing the backdrop for the lovely weather.

Today I left my coat hanging on the coat rack when I left for lunch (I did need it this morning. Still frost on the windows of my car and all). Then I pulled out my iPod and found “Spring is Coming” by the Real Group and turned up the volume. Then I rolled down the windows on my car while I drove to the Mexican place I decided on for lunch (I love me some shredded beef tacos). Then I kept those windows down and that Real Group playing and drove to a park, where I sat in my car with the windows still down and ate my lunch.

Then I went for a walk in the park. Nice and slowly, taking deep breaths as I meandered along the asphalt path. Then I walked off the path for a while, and savored the feeling of walking on ground that gives under your feet. Then I sat down on a swing and just looked around. Then I swung, which I haven’t done for ages, and enjoyed the feeling of the crisp wind on my face and in my hair. Then I walked back to my car and drove (with the windows down and the Real Group still playing) back to work. And even that wasn’t so bad, because I have fresh-cut tulips on my desk and the weatherman says the 40-and-50-degree weather is going to be here for a while.

1) I got my hair cut. Really cut. As in, it hasn’t been this short since I was in 2nd grade. I also put in highlights and lowlights. I’ll take a decent picture of it soon. I’m getting no end of compliments on it.

2) The new carpet is going in my bedroom tomorrow. Yayness! This means I have to move the remainder of my stuff (my bed, computer desk, bedside bookshelf, and deskside bookshelf) out of my room tonight, and will be sleeping on the futon. Boo. And then I get to put my room back together. More boo. It’ll be nice to have all my books available and on my bookshelves again, though. I’ve been living off only those I could fit on my bedside shelf, which is only about 25/30 books. Eek! At least this included all my Austens.

3) My dad has gout. Seriously. It seems to be somewhat of a side effect of his kidney disease (as it’s caused by uric acid, which is of course found in higher levels when the kidney isn’t functioning properly) rather than because he drinks a lot of wine and eats a lot of red meat (because he doesn’t :P), and it hurts. A lot. But we’ve all been joking about going to Bath to take the waters and having great big white bandages and needing crutches from the missionary barrels but getting a doll instead (who recognizes THAT convoluted movie reference, huh?). My niece also had a very mild case of the croup over the weekend, so my family’s all up with Victorian diseases recently. What’s next, I wonder? Cholera? Ague? Consumption? Or maybe we can get away with just an attack of the vapours.

4) Due to the painting and general room renovation, work on the thesis has slowed rather. I expect it to pick up shortly.

From Leaky:

Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger Named Among EW’s Favorite Fictional Lovers

I’m grinning like a loon.

Also making the list are some of my favorites, like Lois/Clark, Aragorn/Arwen, Leia/Han, and of course, Lizzy/Darcy.

(Oh, and remember how I was rejoicing in the sweater weather? Yeah. Yesterday’s storm, which was supposed to be nice and short and relatively uneventful turned into a gigantic storm resulting in closed roads and kids getting stuck at school all night and school closures and a commute that usually takes about 25 minutes taking an hour and 25. Oh, Dreaded Lake Effect, how we love thee. In any case, I’ll believe the weatherman’s “this is the last storm for a while!” when I SEE it, thanks. :P)

It’s sweater weather. As in, I left my coat in the car when I went to lunch. And we haven’t had any snow for four days. It’s crazy, people! For the first time this winter (I think), we’re actually above average instead of waaay below it. It makes me want spring, even though I know it’s much too early to get my hopes up yet. But at least I can wash my car.

Speaking of Lizzy, wanna see a pic of her newly-repaired trunk?

There’s a couple more in the set if you click on the photo. Doesn’t she look gorgeous? We’re still on the lookout for a new trunk panel (you can see that it’s a bit broken if you look at a larger size) and she smells like paint on the inside still, but other than that, I have no complaints. At all. I love my car.

Except that somewhere during the whole ordeal, her license plate frame/cover thingy got broken (I suspect it was the tow truck to blame, because it shouldn’t have been damaged by the actual crash). Said frame used to read “You think that, Jane, if it gives you comfort.” Which is a great line and an even greater inside joke, but it has two problems: 1) it’s from the 1995 mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice, and therefore was not actually written by Jane Austen, and 2) it was spoken by Mr. Bennet to Jane, which means that it doesn’t match with the whole “Lizzy” thing. So I need to come up with an appropriate line from the P&P book that (preferably) was either spoken by or refers to Elizabeth Bennet, and that will fit on a license plate cover. Because, while “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” is awesome, it would be impossible to decipher if we managed to get it on a frame.

So. Want to help me brainstorm? (I have already considered, and rejected, “What are men to rocks and mountains?” because I’m not really that much of an outdoorsy girl.) Come on, you know you want to comb through the pages of P&P.

I’ve been having a weird vertigo thing the last couple of weeks. I’m not dizzy, per se, at least not in the just-got-off-the-Mad-Tea-Party way. I just can’t seem to keep my balance, and the room likes to spin when I move my head too quickly. I eventually went to the doctor last Saturday, who said it was probably related to some congestion in my head (not in my sinuses or nasal passages, though, as they were both perfectly clear) and prescribed meclizine and Nasonex, and told me I could also take Zyrtec if it didn’t get better. I did end up taking the Zyrtec, too, which made me incredibly drowsy for the last week. And the vertigo still hasn’t completely cleared up. Gah.

This has rather slowed down my promising progress on my thesis, as reading a traditional book is difficult due to the angles involved. And there are a couple of other issues as well, which I’m not quite prepared to talk about in public yet. Still, I do seem to be getting a bit better, and am hopeful that the worst of my writer’s block is behind me.

I spent Saturday shopping for room-painting supplies. I think I blogged about this (but I’m waaay too lazy today to go looking), but just as a review, this spring my window well leaked (unbeknownst to me) and caused a big section of my carpet to go all moldy and mildewy and caused water damage to 5 of my 7 bookshelves (I know, that’s a ton– but in my defense, two of them are just teeny 1-foot-wide shelves, which I use as a stereo stand and a bedside table). And it ruined a library book, too, which was intensely distressing to me. Well, the carpet has dried but needed to be replaced, and we finally went and found a remnant that was cheap and a good color. Which means that I get to repaint my room–it’s currently pink, and I’m not really a pink person. It’s going to be a lovely sage green, and I’m going to go home tonight and remove the rest of my wallpaper border and get stuff prepped. Yay! I shall have to take pictures when it’s all done.

I’m also going to get a new bed. This one, to be precise. I’ve always wanted a bed like that. Too bad my room is too small (once you cram my 7 bookshelves in– and I need all of them!) to have more than a twin-sized bed. I’d like to upgrade to a full. Being 27 years old and all.

I woke up this morning to at least 6″ of snow. Driving to work was a nightmare, as none of the roads I usually take had been plowed. At all. Now, I’m pretty good at driving in the snow, but the Prius was sliding around at 12 miles an hour. It was kinda freaky. Got to work okay, though. It did make me miss Lizzy that much more. Lizzy is better in the snow than the Prius.

It’s okay, though, ’cause Lizzy is coming home tomorrow! They painted her yesterday, and were re-assembling her today. Apparently her new trunk lid was originally champagne-colored, and her new bumper was dark blue. And they couldn’t find a DX model trunk for her, so the back insert was going to be the standard gray kind instead of the spiffy-used-for-that-model-year-only red one. Buying a brand-new one was going to cost $400. But then dad talked to the body shop guy today, and he said that the original one wasn’t really that damaged. So he’s putting Lizzy’s back on, until we can find a completely undamaged one. It also means that Lizzy will be missing the “DX” sticker-thingy on the trunk, but dad found one on eBay for $6.

Can you tell I’m excited about getting my car back?

I’m going to Disneyland in April! Whoot! With my sister Lisa and her BFF Sarah, right after Lisa’s finals end. And I mean RIGHT after. ‘Cause Disneyland is doing a deal where, if you go to the park on April 24 or before, you can get a 5-day Park Hopper pass for the price of a 3-day. And Lisa’s last final is April 23rd, at 1:00 pm. So, we’re flying out that night at about 8, and going to Disney the next day. Staying until Monday, and flying home again at 8:00 that night. I’ve never been to Disneyland over multiple days before. I wonder how many times I’ll manage to squeeze in Pirates? *ponders*

Watched Northanger Abbey last night. Really enjoyed it, although, of course, there were a few things that bugged. I was prepared to hate it, because Mags of Austenblog hated it, and my taste tends to be similar to hers. But I liked it. Quite a lot. It was better than Persuasion, anyway. I’m looking forward to Mansfield Park in a this-is-going-to-be-a-trainwreck kind of way. I have no particular attachment to the novel, you see, so I think I’ll be able to enjoy it as Le Bad Cinema (as our local movie guy dubs really really bad flicks), since it’s rather obvious I won’t be able to enjoy it as Good Cinema. Since they cast Billie Piper as Fanny Price and all. I love Billie Piper, but she simply isn’t Fanny Price.

Of course, the small things that they didn’t get right in Northanger Abbey have me reading the novel again, even though I reread it only a month or so ago. Not that there’s anything wrong with rereading Austen, ever. But I just can’t let all of Henry’s snarky lines go unappreciated. I lent one of my copies (yes, I have several) to Lisa, too, so soon she too will be reveling in the sexiness that is Henry Tilney.

Don’t get me wrong. I like my job. I don’t love it, but I like it. Most of the time the people I deal with outside of the company are polite. My coworkers are all nice. And how much, really, can you complain about a job that lets you play around on the internet ALL DAY LONG if you want, or if you don’t, will let you knit or read or do whatever, as long as you can answer the phone? Not much.

But there are a few little irritations, the biggest of which is the lack of communication. Seriously, no one tells each other anything, and if there *is* a need-to-know list, I’m on the bottom of it. Understandable when it comes to stuff like programming and patient info and things like that, but usually? These are things I need to know. Oh, you’re expecting 3 people for a meeting come 3:00? Please tell me in advance instead of when they start arriving, because then I’ll know where to send them. Oh, you’re changing the stuff that gets sent out in our info packets? Well, since I’m the one who MAKES said packets AND sends them out, I should probably be informed that you’re taking out those two pages of staff info, instead of letting me send out the original packets for two weeks (and even then, I only found out about it because I had to print more and asked them if they wanted to update them).

Today was really irritating, though. First our maintenance guy asks if he got any faxes, and I say no, because, well, he hasn’t. So he gets on the phone with the person he expects the fax from, and she says that the fax line is getting intercepted by voicemail. Weird. So I tell the maintenance guy to call the IT guy, ’cause I certainly don’t know anything about any changes to the fax lines, and couldn’t do anything about it if I did. And then, about 5 minutes later, I get a call from someone saying that he’s having a hard time getting through– that it’s either asking for a mailbox extension or just hanging up on him. Okay, something must be up with the phone lines. Of course, the IT guy isn’t even here today. And then another call comes in, and it has caller ID info. I’ve never gotten caller ID before. Just “Caller ID Unknown.”

And then I get a call from a telecomm company, who needs to check the lines because they just switched our telecomm service over 10 minutes ago.

Gee, people. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the RECEPTIONIST, to whom ALL CALLS COME during business hours, should know that we’re switching telecomm companies, and there might be an interruption of service?

NAH.

But hey, I have caller ID now, so maybe I’ll be able to tell if it’s an employee calling and can skip my spiel.

I’ve decided that I need to update more. At first I thought of posting every single day, but then I realized that the main reason I haven’t been posting much lately is that my life has become incredibly boring. I figured you didn’t want to read about how I got up, went to work, went home, and failed to get stuff done on my thesis every day. So I decided that once a week is a much more reasonable goal, and much less annoying for my loyal flist. If I have anyone left.

I’ve been feeling kinda weird lately. I woke up on Monday morning with my ears plugged– you know, the pressure thing that you get on airplanes and such, or when you have a bad cold. Except neither of those things had occurred, and there was no pain involved, just pressure. So, I took the only decongestant we had on hand that didn’t also include cough suppressant and/or pain relievers, which happened to be Mucinex. Then I went to work. Stopped at my usual 7-11 for my usual hot chocolate, and got a Nature Valley Sweet & Salty bar (almond) to go along with it. Well, I don’t know if it was a reaction to the Mucinex, or a lack of eating enough breakfast to go with said Mucinex, or if it was just the pressure on my inner ear, but right at lunch time I suddenly got horribly dizzy. And weak. And the dizziness made me sick to my stomach. And I thought I’d better eat something, so I drove my dad’s Prius (which he’s been able to loan to me this week while he’s off work and Lizzy’s still in the shop) to the closest place to get food that I could think of, which happened to be a grocery store (that also has a dang good deli– their sub sandwiches are a thing of beauty and a joy forever). But I found that I was too dizzy to stand in line to have a sandwich made, and none of the pre-packaged deli stuff looked at all appealing, due to my nausea. So I did the only thing I could think of– I bought a bottle of Power-ade and sat down in the bistro to drink it, hoping that whatever they put in it to help athletes would help me.

It didn’t, particularly. At least, not at first. So I got back in the car and called my mom. I was feeling really ill by this point– like I’d just touched down after a ride-along in an F-16 during a Thunderbirds performance. I really needed to lay down, but I knew I could drive all the way home. We decided I’d try to make it back to work and see if Kim (who covers me for lunch) would be okay with covering the rest of the day. Then she and dad would come pick me up. Luckily, Kim managed to work it out, and I got home and collapsed on the sofa. A nap helped a little (although I think it was more the fact that I was laying down), and some Sudafed helped a bit more, and food helped, too. But I still wasn’t feeling a hundred percent, and I couldn’t be vertical without being a bit dizzy.

Yesterday I made it through work, but still spent almost the whole evening horizontal. The pressure was gone, but the dizziness was still there, a bit. And today, the pressure is back, and I can feel the dizziness coming on again. I took Sudafed this morning, but haven’t noticed an appreciable difference. I did eat more for breakfast, though (two pieces of multigrain toast and a banana in addition to my hot chocolate), so I hope I don’t have a complete repeat of Monday. If this keeps up, I may end up at Instacare after work.

So there’s a guy standing here at my desk filling out an application. Even if we were hiring right now, which we’re not really except for one particular job for which he’s definitely not qualified, he wouldn’t be getting hired at our place. First off, he just walked in and asked for an application. When I asked what job he was applying for, he said “any job.” Umm, yeah. And then he asked if we and the hospital across the street are the same. No. Way to be informed about the company you’re applying for, dude. And then, when I gave him the application, he stood at my desk instead of grabbing a magazine from the seating area to my left to use as a writing surface. And then he started to sing along to the music. I guess I should be impressed at his knowledge of Oldies, but I wasn’t. And then he talked about how he’s probably going to move away anyway, because there aren’t any jobs here. Except, of course, that Utah has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, to the point where there are many more jobs than available workers. I doubt the same is true in Massachusetts and North Carolina (although I can’t be fussed to look it up. I might be wrong). He just handed me the app. In the “position applied for” space, he put “warehouse.” Yeah. We’re a medical facility. And then he came back and asked for a card, which made it abundantly clear that he’s just walking up and down the street, filing applications in any place that will let him, so that he can qualify for unemployment.

I’m tempted to just throw this away. I don’t even know who to give it to, honestly.

It was snowing this morning, but as I don’t have any windows, I can’t tell if it still is. We’ve been getting a storm pretty much every other day ’round here, although the weather report this morning said that after another storm on Friday we should be getting a high pressure that’ll keep the storms at bay for a bit. It’s been kind of nice– I can’t remember how long it’s been since we’ve consistently had snow on the ground for several weeks at a time. Part of that is because it’s been so dang cold the snow won’t melt, but still– it’s more like the winters I remember from my childhood, rather than the drought-type winters we’ve had recently.

I wonder if I scrimp and save and don’t buy any new yarn this year (I really have quite a few projects waiting, with the yarn already purchased) if I could afford to go to England. I’ve wanted to go for ages, but I have a new inducement– David Tennant will be playing Hamlet this summer and fall with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The fact that Patrick Stewart will be playing Claudius is an additional temptation. I desperately want to compare David Tennant with Brian Vaughn. I wonder how he’ll stack up.

Well, my Lizzy got moved to The Other Body Shop today. They expect it to be finished in about 10 working days. Yayness!

So when my parents went to move it from Mark Miller to the Other Body Shop, they took my digital camera. Behold, the damage done to my car by an idiot who couldn’t be bothered to keep her eyes on the road.

Boy, that’s depressing. But she’ll be fixed! Dad said that the car didn’t drive any differently than it always has, so we have high hopes that the damage really is purely cosmetic. Crossing fingers!

So. On Friday, Allstate finally got an adjuster out to see Lizzy. The results were not encouraging. They wanted to total her. The cost of the parts was more than they were willing to pay. But, they’d give us a lower figure if we wanted to get it fixed. About $4800 for totalling, about $3900 for just a settlement. We asked for time to think it over, and asked the body shop (at Mark Miller, the dealership we originally bought the car from) to do an estimate on how much it’d actually cost to get it repaired. If it was only a thousand or so more, Mom and Dad would consider doing it. After all, the main part of the car was undamaged, you know, the really important stuff like the engine. Anyway, it was a blow to hear that. I cried.

And then on Monday, Mark Miller called. Turns out that since Allstate decided the car was a total loss, the car would be declared a salvage car, and they wouldn’t even touch it. They said some places might take it on, but we were on our own. Crap. I cried some more.

Luckily, we had a bit of an ace in the hole. You see, before my mom and dad met, my mom had bought a brand-new Corolla. A ’77. And then, in 1983, when I was just a wee thing, some lady who was driving with a kid ON HER LAP and wasn’t paying attention to, you know, driving, slammed into Alex (the Corolla– you see my family has a long history of naming our cars) while it was parked in front of our house. Smashed up the whole trunk, not just the side of it like happened to Lizzy. And, of course, the insurance wanted to total it. But mom and dad were incredibly poor at the time (dad still in school, mom not working, 4 kids age 4 and under), and couldn’t have bought a comparable car for the money they were offering. Plus, Alex was my mom’s car, her first car. She loved that car. So they did something rather drastic. They found a body shop that would cut the back of Alex off and weld the back of another car to it. And what do you know, it worked. Of course, from then on the trunk said it was a 5-speed when it was actually a 4-speed. But they drove that car for another 15 years before it got hit again (this time in a parking lot, by a car whose driver hadn’t put on his parking brake, who had then driven off. Luckily, a bystander had written down his license # and he had the cops show up at his door. And yes, all of our major car accidents have been entirely the other person’s fault) and we finally donated it to the Utah Kidney Foundation (and yes, Mom cried when he got towed away, and still has his key on her keyring).

So, prior experience had taught us that the impossible-to-fix was– not quite so impossible. And dad remembered the name of the body shop who’d fixed Alex– The Other Body Shop. So he called them up. And it was even the same guy, Randy, although of course he didn’t remember having fixed a car back in 1983. Randy listened to the story and said that he thought it’d probably be fixable, but that he’d have to look it over to be sure. He and dad made an appointment for today.

The end of my lunchbreak rolls around, and I get a call from dad. Randy thinks Lizzy is definitely fixable. He can’t be sure until he gets it apart, but he doesn’t think the frame is bent. Dad asks him for a full bid, including a full paint job (which we were going to do in the spring anyway– there were some worrisome rust spots on Lizzy’s roof where the paint had chipped away–and which probably would have cost us $1500). Randy says he’ll have one later today.

Half an hour later, the bid comes in. Fully restored, full paint job– $4500. He’s already found the necessary parts from a Corolla DX that had front-end damage. They can get here in 3-4 days. Work could start next week.

It would still mean that Lizzy is a salvage car, which means that we couldn’t sell it to anyone else, really. And we won’t be able to have comprehensive on her anymore, just collision, which means that if Lizzy gets hit again ever, she’s toast. OTOH, the rates would go down. And I fully plan on driving Lizzy into the ground, and sending her away to join Alex when there’s no hope for her.

So, yeah. Mom and Dad haven’t decided for sure yet, but it’s looking hopeful that I might get my Lizzy back after all. Despite all indicators to the contrary.