still busy. very very very busy. no time for reflection.

i have a dentist appointment on saturday. i haven't been to the dentist for a long, long while. he creeps me out. i can't stand the smell of the place...and the sound of drills *shudder*.

i don't have internet access at my new place. it's amazing how much you can accomplish when the option of signing on isn't there. but i feel so cut off from the world lately.

oh! I HAVE A NEW CELL NUMBER, so email me for it if i didn't already give it to you. i just mass-emailed my number to everyone, but i got all these return emails from that bastard DAEMON...so i guess i have a lot of outdated addresses.

sitting at the office right now, eating a rice bowl and drinking green tea vitamin water. another thursday.

I'm moving out of my house this weekend.

I've moved out before, during college, but I've always left all of my non-essential things behind, knowing I'd be able to come back and get them if I ever needed to. But my room is going to be used for other things, and I need to clear everything out this time, and I doubt that I'll ever be living in this house again.

Strange, realizing that I no longer live at home anymore.

I've lived in this house since I was a baby. I remember running around the neighborhood with the other kids (all of whom have moved away) repeating the only thing I knew how to say in English: "Just a minute!" I remember the glorious day I finally grew tall enough to reach the light switches on my tippy-toes. I remember sitting in the front yard with my mother, tickling one another's noses with the weeds. Years later, sneaking out the back door at night (and sneaking people in). I've gone through 22 years of laughter, arguments, fear, joy, tears, in this house. So many memories reside here.

It'll still be here, of course, but I'll no longer have my space here. It's sad to think that my whole life fits into a few truckloads of boxes.

Upheaval is a catalyst for change.

i've been so busy lately i barely have time to breathe, much less write, so i have decided to use my saturday night to mull over law school applications and try to put some thoughts together for my personal statement. i should have done this a long time ago, but considering that i now have 13 days to fill up the blank paper that is my essay so far, and fill out all of my (blank) applications, and get my transcript from Fullerton College sent over to the LSDAS, and make sure all of my letters of reccomendation are in, it looks as if next weekend will also be spent at home.

the new job is very hectic, but i am now so much more clear about what it is a lawyer actually does all day. my co-workers are just about some of the most stressed-out people i've ever seen in my life. also, they speak legalese, which is a completely foreign language to me. they run around throwing phrases like "motion in limine for collateral estoppel" at me... and i have not an inkling of what they mean. do they want me to stopper their collateral with a modified lime? if i survive it, i'll learn a lot from this job.

I bought FIVE pairs of shoes today for a little under $70.00! I have a pair of red euro-style tennis shoes that look like bowling shoes, three dressy strappy shoes, and a pair of black boots. I am so proud of myself.

for some reason, all of my old shoes decided to fall apart in unison. could it be possible that i wear them all out at exactly the same rate?

i didn't vote yesterday. and i don't even feel guilty about it. why? because, dammit, we had two of the most sorry lame-asses on the planet running for governor. i have a major problem with smear campaigns, and it seems that all gray davis has been spending his tens of millions of fundraising money on is defaming simon on national tv. not that simon doesn't seem kinda goober-ish himself.

maybe someday, when the gubernatorial candidate is not a cretin devoid of common sense and morality, i'll actually drag my lazy ass to the polls.

actually, strike that. i'm registering to vote for 2004 elections--i'm voting for whoever runs against bush. i don't care who it is.

2nd day of my new job. worked from 8:35 till 7:40. learned ten million new things. tired as hell. byebye.

i made my own halloween costume. it's a tulle skirt with flowers and ferns and spanish moss---i'm gonna be a woodland fairy! i have big purple ears and a wand, too. i ran around the house in my costume all night last night.

tomorrow is my last day at my job!! i'll try to look sad, but i'm sure i'll barely be able to contain my glee. i'll be lucky if i don't break into paroxysms of joy in the middle of my goodbye lunch. in the past two weeks, i've finished all their database queries and reports up to june, so if they don't find someone else who can use a computer by then, it's their own fault. ha.

do i talk too much?

Baby61212: but really, i don't like online chess
eMdeeMae77: heh
eMdeeMae77: aite
eMdeeMae77: some reason i like the top view
Baby61212: i'm going to mexico soon, and i;m going to buy a miniature chess set while i'm there and accost everyone with it
eMdeeMae77: accost eh?
Baby61212: i like the "unnerve your opponent with steely glare" view
eMdeeMae77: hrmmm
eMdeeMae77: for some reason
eMdeeMae77: i can't imagine u able to do that
Baby61212: how about "talk your opponent into delerium" view?
eMdeeMae77: u do that even when not playing chess

i got my LSACD in the mail today. i was hoping that, considering how much i paid the LSDAS, it would be wrapped in $5 dollar bills, or that when i opened it i'd find a golden ticket, but alas, all i get is a cardboard sleeve (and a flimsy one, at that).

monday again. on the other hand, this is the LAST monday i will ever be spending at my inane job. kinda makes me glad it's monday :)

instead of going to washington DC and new york, i have decided instead to go on a cruise. sunshine and fish tacos just seem like a better way to spend my vacation than cold weather and a bullet in the head.

speaking of vacation, my work is refusing to pay me my vacation time!
Try to solve this legal quandry: (more for my reference than anything else, but please give me any and all suggestions you can!!!)

My company policy states (sic):
"After 1 year of continuous full time employment with the company, you are eligible for 2 weeks paid vacation annually. The vacation allowance is during the calendar year and vacation days do not accumulate. Vacations cannot be "cashed" for addiditonal payroll."

My first day of employment was September 13, 2001. I have worked 40 hours each week since then.

A few of my friends have pointed out that it's illegal in California for companies to force their employees to "use or lose" their vacation, and that unused vacation must be paid out as extra payroll. Read all about that here, and here, and here.

Last year, I used up 5 of my vacation days, which were advanced to me before my one-year anniversary in good faith that I would, in fact, stay for a year.
After September 13 (my one-year anniversary), I requested a vacation day off to go to Arizona, and it was approved.

When I gave my two weeks' notice, I asked my employer if I could take my four remaining days of vacation. They refused, and will not pay me for my vacation because "they do not want to make a habit of paying people for vacation when they are leaving."

Doesn't make much sense, does it? Well, I asked for a written denial of my vacation pay, and they refused, saying that they will sign nothing.

Now, they say that ANOTHER reason I don't get vacation pay is because I was not actually classified as a full-time employee until December 7th (ostensibly, after my 3 month probation period...but that doesn't make sense either, because then it would be December 13th). However, they gave me my one-year anniversary review in September, and approved the one vacation day I took in September... so it sounds to me like they're trying to find an excuse to push back my date of eligibility.

Some questions:
What is the definition "1 year of continuous full time employment"? It is not outlined in the company policy. If I have been working 40 hours a week for one year, would that not qualify me as a full-time employee for a year, or would I have to be checked off somewhere on some form or other as a "real" full-timer?
If they gave me my one-year review in September, does that not imply that I was with the company for one full year?

Pretty confusing, eh? I don't think it's very fair, but since I'm still on good terms with my boss, I'll sit on it for about 6 months.

i went wrinkle cream shopping with my ex yesterday. he is obsessed with the (false) notion that he is starting to look old and wrinkly and droopy. when i got home, i carefully examined my face in the mirror, and i am now convinced that i, too, am exhibiting the first signs of age. i have these tiny little lines around my mouth, and if i crinkle up my eyes i can see the beginnings of crow's feet. ugh.

anyone privy to information on anti-war (on iraq) protests, please let me know--i wanna protest!!!

meanwhile, check out Not In Our Name

Oh. my. god.

i just registered for the LSDAS (Law School Data Assembly Service). I knew beforehand that it's a ripoff, but it didn't really hit me until i actually plunked down the cash.

now let me get this straight:

$99 for putting my name on a file folder.
$10 each time I want them to open the folder and mail out a transcript ($12 each time if i don't prepay--i paid for 8 in advance, that's $80 for them to mail shit!).
$63 for the CD containing all the law school applications. the CD is coded to my name so it cannot be copied, and if i choose not to get the CD, i have to write to each school separately for their applications and fill out the ones that don't have electronic apps. in other words, it's infinitely easier to jut pay $63.

my question is--how the FUCK do these people sleep at night knowing they're squeezing the last pennies out of poor students? on their space-foam Duxiana beds with goose-down comforters lined in $100 bills, i reckon.

damn, i'm in the wrong business.

"It is with regret, yet strong conviction, that I resign as Marketing Director effective October 25th, 2002." WOOOHOOOEEEEEE!!!

got my contract and i'm outies from my tedious, borefest of a job in two short weeks!

then, I'm going to Washington DC and New York, and if i don't get shot in the head i start at the law firm on Nov. 4th.

i am starting another blog. I'll still keep this one, but since i'm too broke to get blogspot plus, i can't filter out the posts that i wouldn't want a prospective employer to read. i am taking suggestions for this new, g-rated blog that will contain mostly cut-&-paste entries from this blog, plus writing samples and my resume. so far i've come up with: silentsanctum.blogspot.com and the oh-so-exciting [my name].blogspot.com. email me some better ideas--the winner gets a pair of extra-large thongs and my old broken cell phone! AND, if you email in the next 10 minutes, you get my OTHER old, broken cell phone ABSOLUTELY FREE!

It just gets worse and worse: The Bush Doctrine

I FOUND GELATO IN LOS ANGELES!!!!!!!!!! yummy, creamy, delicious gelato. goodbye diet, hello extra 20 pounds!

it's called Al Gelato, but i will lobby for a name-change to "Karen's Second Home." i tried the banana and coconut. but i also tasted the blackberry, pistachio, and honeydew. all were amazing. and to make things even better, they serve great pasta and pizza, and whenever you order food you get big slices of crusty bread with a dish of olives and a jar of pickled peppers.

i heard a radio interview with laura bush recently, and the interviewer asked her what the president has been reading lately. she said that he just finished reading The Emperor of Ocean Park (by Stephen Carter)....but so have i! i don't know what to think now...i mean, i feel like now we share some kind of literary comraderie, and i can no longer hate him as much because he, too, enjoyed the book.

some time in the past few weeks, geroge w. bush and i were reading the same book at the exact same time. *shudder*

Two passages, out of order, from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:

“In the end they knew each other so well that by the time they had been married for thirty years they were like a single divided being, and they felt uncomfortable at the frequency with which they guessed each other’s thoughts without intending to, or the ridiculous accident of on of them anticipating in public what the other was going to say. Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful of their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

“Dr. Urbino caught the parrot around the neck with a triumphant sigh: ca y est. But he released him immediately because the ladder slipped from underneath his feet and for an instant he was suspended in air and he realized that he had died without Communion, without time to repent of anything or to say goodbye to anyone, at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday.
“Fermina Daza was in the kitchen tasting the soup for supper when she heard Digna Pardo’s horrified shriek and the shouting of the servants and then of the entire neighborhood. She dropped the tasting spoon and tried her best to run despite the invincible weight of her age, screaming like a madwoman without knowing yet what had happened under the mango leaves, and her heart jumped inside her ribs when she saw her man lying on his back in the mud, dead to this life but still resisting death’s final blow for one last minute so that she would have time to come to him. He recognized her despite all the uproar, through his tears of unrepeatable sorrow at dying without her, and he looked at her for the last and final time with eyes more luminous, more grief-stricken, more grateful than she had ever seen in half a century of a shared life, and he managed to say to her with his last breath: ‘Only God knows how much I loved you.’”

i forgot Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess at work today, and am now suffering from acute separation anxiety.

Life really sucks ass right about now.

i just ate 1/2 scoop of ice cream, and i feel so guilty. i hate this cholesterol-free, taste-free diet thing. it puts me in a bad mood.

which reminds me: i am so fucking tired of this prospective employer stringing me along!! FIVE interviews and TWO job offers later, they have yet to give me a definitive answer as to whether i can quit my current job to work for them. goddammit, i am at a standstill because their offer is too good to take lightly, and all they can do is make vague promises (that THEY initiate, mind you) and tell me to keep in touch or that they're just on the edge of a decision. I'm even in salary negotiations with them for chrissakes, yet i've received no concrete offer letter and no go-ahead to resign my current job. I'm losing hope...and self-esteem. A year after graduating from college, I'm still puttering around in a dead-end boring job, having learned little to nothing that I couldn't have taught myself, about to be knee-deep in law school application fee debt when i have no idea how the hell i'm going to be able to afford law school in the first place, living paycheck-to-paycheck with no clear vision of my future career plans, no longer on speaking terms with my evil stepmother, and generally stressed the hell out for fear that i am, in reality, merely a mediocre peon unwilling to admit my inferiority.

okay, i'm done whining.

my doctor told me last week to severely limit my intake of cholesterol, so the whole week i ate nothing but vegetables and ungreasy food. then, the weekend came, and i am now chock-full of artery clogging cholesterol. among other things, i ate: fried lobster, fried crab, rotisserie chicken with garlic butter, gelato...the list goes on. the point of that previous rambling being...i found good homemade gelato that isn't in Italy! although it is in san diego, which is defintely too far to go on spontaneous gelato-runs.

this week, i cured myself of a long-time addiction, and i am never turning back: i abandoned my hotmail account. instead, i now have yahoo, where i have 4mb storage space and am not deluged with spam offering me a larger penis. my new address is: meow61212@yahoo.com. actually, i will still be checking my hotmail periodically, so i haven't quit cold-turkey yet. one day at a time.

i am overcome with the fear that, now in his older and wiser days, my cat has decided that he does not love me anymore. he loves my father, but not me. then again, my dad feeds him sirloin steak, and i only feed him chef's blend (sprinkled on top of his wet cat food, cut into cubes, and microwaved for 10 seconds). i do everything i can to try to win him over, but i just really don't think he's gotten over my painting his paws green last june. i have the sneaking suspicion that he's only using me for food.

i'm SO over my closet. it's hopeless. it's actually impeccably organized, but now my room is filled with everything that used to be in my closet...and my room is a total mess! i'd rather have a messy closet and clean room than a messy room and clean closet.

my new strange obsession has become...chess. ever since i finished reading The Emperor of Ocean Park, I've been really wanting to learn to play chess well. i am now reading Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.

closet cleaning....chess strategy books....um, can i get any more nerdy?

I was listening to NPR on my way to work this morning, and came across live coverage of Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly.

Here is the Text of Bush's speech to United Nations. keep in mind while reading the text of the speech that Bush pronounces "nuclear" like this: "Noo-cue-lar"....puts a whole new pinon things. hasn't anyone told him that he's butchering the one word he keeps using to make his powerful, moving points?

Laughable pronunciation aside, I agree with the analysts that this is a well-written speech (amont other things, it is certainly vague enough while still managing to warn of US unilateral military action). Hooray for Bush's speech writers!

He still doesn't have a point though. Here's why.

ugh. i am very sick. i crawled out of bed to make myself chicken soup, and then while i was eating it, i was convinced of the unequivocal hatred that god must harbor towards me, because a cricket jumped into my soup and drowned itself. now i do not have the energy to make more soup (and even if i did, i wouldn't be able to taste it anyway) so i will lay in bed some more and read about people more miserable than i (El Amor en los Tiempos de Colera ).

Weekend recap:

Thursday...went to Felix's and shared 2 bottles of wine. Then, headed down to Er and Francis', where I drank 3 more bottles of San Miguel and then commenced taking swigs out of the bottle of Jack and Southern Comfort with the guys. I drank like a man, dammit! The next thing i remember I'm throwing up all of my salmon on the side of the freeway. Here are a few highlights (some i do not remember):
*Group primal scream
*Er pouring beer into Mike's ear
*Jon wanting to jump through the living room window very very much
*Er throwing office chair at Mike
*People throwing one another into the bathtub full of ice
*Joe prostrate on the cement with his head in a bush
*Loud drunken rendition of "drop, baby drop, baby drop, drop all your love on me"

I wake up in the morning, still drunk (I find out later that just about everyone else woke up drunk too....worst of all was Mike, who woke up drunk still in the hallway of the empty apartment) and drag myself to work. Somehow i make it through, and then head to church retreat! Hypocritical, you say? I fully agree. Spent the weekend soaking in mineral hot springs, eating resort food, staring at the beautiful lake and black swans....and i must admit, not praying very much at all. I have some issues to work through, but I do not know if I will find the answers at church retreat.

After a weekend of heartfelt talks, admonitions, and altar-calls set to the weepy picking of a guitar, i have only been able to recoil at what now appears to me as emotional manipulation...preying on the insecurities and wounds of a few kids who are hurting so much inside. the altar call dangles in front of you the shiny carrot of forgiveness for your sins, healing for your pain, communion with your peers...but at the price, in my humble opinion, of your self-reliance.

i am not saying that we as humans can ever be self-reliant....but we must learn before we submit to a higher power the abitlity to discern the things caused by our own actions from those directed by divine intervention. too often it seems that whenever i'm wrong, it's because i'm an imperfect sinner and i deserve all the bad things that happen, yet whenever anything good happens to me, i should thank god for his blessing. i want my successes, as well as my failures, to be my own.

even so, i realize that just because i want something to be a certain way doesn't mean that it is.