Still feeling drained from the hike. My calves are very stiff. I uploaded the pics and to my dismay, most of the photos of the petroglyphs came out blurry. I really need to figure out how this camera works. Anyway, managed to salvage a few:

( hike photos )

It's that time of year now where I'm driving home into the sunset. It is so stunning here, streaking and dotted clouds in a dozen shades of red and gold.

Memeage:

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a Self-Knowing Organized Believer

Just a quick post to note that today marks a year since I moved to Arizona. I didn't move here entirely for my parents' benefit, but that decision proved to be prescient since they have needed a lot of help this year. I was physically exhausted from my long trip that evening when I rolled into town, today I am emotionally exhausted from time spent at my father's bedside.

I also have a nice house, a job, and old friends close by. It's been a roller coaster year.

I can has house!

And internets.

The movers are coming sometime in the "window" of 8 am - 12 pm (don't you just *hate* that?) I'm mostly ready for them. Since I'm only going twenty miles and the parentals aren't going anywhere, I haven't been in this big rush to pack. So, the past couple of nights I've had to decide what to do with all my loose items I've accumulated over five and a half months. The movers wanted them all in boxes. I'm just like, meh. So I've been throwing everything into shopping bags and from there into my car. Not the most organized plan, but then, I figure I'll be living in chaos for the next....

In ARGH! news, I shot a roll of "before" pics with a disposable camera Thursday evening, took them to Walgreens, and asked that they be digitized. I picked them up yesterday afternoon, and the disc was empty! Now I have to take it back and ask them to fix it. So no "before" pics for the time being. I did buy a cheapo digital camera in Walgreens yesterday as well. I think it'll work fine, just have very few "exposures" before downloading is necessary. What a wonderful invention. Then you don't have 25,000 photos lying around gathering dust, you only print the ones you really like.

Once the movers come, I will be off the radar until I get my internet installed over there, which should be...tomorrow!

Just that, I have a house.

So I made an offer on the Carmen house last night.

And spent my free moments afterwards imagining how I'd fix it up, rather than obsessing over its flaws. So this is good. It's a two-bedroom patio home with two baths, two private patios (front and rear), and a garage. And a fireplace and a den nook off the living room. And gorgeous tile floors everywhere except the bedrooms, which are carpeted.

It needs painting in a few rooms where the current owner did a OMG-what-was-she-thinking thing with the walls. Plus, I'd like a patio cover in the rear patio. And bushes put up around the ugly boxes out front.

If all goes well, we'll close on the 10th.

...and I'm still young enough to care.

I'm having a little trouble finding my Tempe cottage, so my realtor (a 60-ish/70ish gal) and my mother both say, "Try Chandler! Try Gilbert!" These are towns in the vicinity of Tempe, where I want to live, and Gilbert, where I now work.

Except...ew. Chandler is like, a *bedroom* community. As Gertrude Stein once quipped, "There's no there there." Same with Gilbert. (And let's not even mention Mesa, retirement capital of the West.) Tempe, on the other hand, is a college town. That's like a business-class ticket to cool with complementary mojo after takeoff. And Phoenix is a City (or the closest thing we have to one around these parts), so it's also cool. Especially if you live in one of its more attractive neighborhoods, like Ahwatukee, which borders Tempe.

So I'm going to hold out for Tempe, because that was the original plan all those months I was scheming about my new life.

According to a relocation website, if I got the same salary in the Mesa, Arizona area I had in the San Francisco, California area (which I have), I net a +$21,723.00 change in disposable income*.

Wow.

And yet, I mooch:




* This factoid in ::no way:: brought to you by the "get Plin to Southwest U" campaign.

I haz cupcake on mah profile paj!

Thanks, mamculuna!!

I also haz real cake in mah frij. My mommy bot it just for me. And her. And dad. We had cake and icecream sandwiches yesterday evening after mom and I returned from dinner at the Olive Garden.

Well, we went to the Olive Garden around 4ish, then headed over to Tempe to look at the outsides of two patio homes I had liked earlier that day in my five and half hour quest. I think my realtor and I saw, like, twenty places. ( patio home shopping blather )

All in all, a great birthday!

( I want this job! )

Wish me luck!

ETA: Well, I sent the work samples. Now I'm paranoid that they thought I did just fine on their test and after seeing the samples, they think I'm a hack. Can you tell this is making me nutso?

Eesh. I'm glad I didn't sign up for Nano. The word counts are appearing already on my flist and it's giving me hives. Me and word counts are unmixy things. Numbers don't = progress in my writing. I've got over 7,900 words on TD 210 already, and considering that's almost all dialogue, it means I'm overwriting again.

So, yesterday I did the thing. You know, the thing. I turned down the job offer. ( job hunt blather )

Happy November all! It's my mommy's birthday.

I just got back from playing tour guide to the lovely and understandably exhausted superplin, who has been in town the past couple days interviewing at one of our local institutions of higher learning (what am I saying? THE local institution of higher learning in this burg). I use the term "tour guide" loosely since I barely know my way around this area myself. Enough to get her downtown to see the new academic facilities there, then to old town Scottsdale and its fine arts galleries and tourist shops, the Camelback road area, and then down into south Tempe, where she saw the patio homes I am pining for.

We had a nice lunch and lots of chat, and maybe, if we're lucky, they'll be more Plin around these parts in the future!

No word from the place I interviewed at earlier this week, who said they'd get back to me yesterday. But I already have been invited to another interview next week. Must quickly lose five pounds so my suit fits.

My kitty is sick. No, not the one who has the hyperactive thyroid (Laren, age 15). She's been sick for a year and a half and we're managing that just fine with meds. But now the *other* one has been losing her meals steadily for the past week (Jezebel, age 14). She threw up some before that, too, but now it's chronic. I took her to the vet. They gave me some stuff to settle her stomach, but it's not working. They did blood tests and a physical exam. All showed nothing, except normal. I'm going to call the vet today, but I fear she'll just say Jez needs more expensive tests like ultrasounds and stuff.

And oh, btw, I'm still unemployed. I have a little $ in the bank, but it's earmarked for specific stuff I've been working towards for years now. I have two job interviews next week. But I've averaged a job interview a week since mid-August and have yet to get an offer. Oh, and this is not me feeling sorry for myself. This is just me trying to figure out how I'm going to juggle my life until it gets settled down again.

Dear buyer:

I'm in ur condo, packing mai stuff.

I didn't get the behavioral health IT job, they decided to hire internally. ::iz bummed:: That would have been a really interesting job. Now I'm holding out hope for the Clinical Data Programmer job with the company that does Statistical stuff for pharmaceutical clinical trials. I had lunch with their president (and his wife and colleague) on Wednesday and talked to their head of Clinical Data Management this morning in a phone interview. It's more work-intensive than I want, but it would also be interesting.

Long week. I'm tired. Time for food, TV, and TD.

PS: The second half of season 4 of AtS is completely on crack. Ever notice that?

Two job interviews today, back-to-back. Now me tired. All these jobs I'm interviewing for seem so intense. The corporate "We need results...yesterday!" attitude. Part of me just wants any old job so I can spend the rest of my time curled up on the recliner writing fic. Guess it ain't gonna work that way if I want to make decent money.

Think I'd make a good frozen yogurt store clerk?

Job interview this morning went well, I think. Then this afternoon I got a last-minute phone interview with a software firm that does official state web portals. Tomorrow's some other phone interview in the morning, I don't even know what, and Sunday I got a call from a company I'd given up on last month because the flaky CEO never called me back. They do stastical software for pharmaceutical clinical trials. He wants to meet with me for lunch on Wednesday.

Stuff's happening in the job hunt! So why do I want to just curl up and sleep for the rest of the week?

Assuming the escrow goes smoothly, we close at the end of the month and I'll be in SF on the 28th and 29th, missing my daddy's birthday.

Which reminds me, two nephew October birthdays.

*pokes at TD 209*

I'm in contract to sell my condo.

Squee!