Tonight I went over to my friend Stephanie’s apartment to watch a movie.  She’s a teacher and today was her first day back in school, so we were celebrating/mourning the beginning of school and the end of summer.  We watched Evan Almighty, which was a fantastic movie.  We also ate M&Ms and cheesy popcorn.  Fun times.

On my way over to Stephanie’s, the “check engine” light on my dashboard came on.  Eeeek, that made me nervous!  I was afraid that might mean something was dreadfully wrong with my car, and I just can’t afford a repair right now!  Chances are it is just because the mileage has rolled past a pre-set repair date, and it’s not a big deal, but I was (and AM) very nervous nonetheless!

Man oh man, I worked hard to look good today.  Most days, since I work from home, I just throw on a pair of jeans and a tshirt.  No makeup, nothing fancy- no one to impress!  But today, since I was going to what I thought would be a job interview, I made myself look good.  I manicured and pedicured my nails.  I plucked my eyebrows.  I picked out an office-dress outfit.  I wore shoes that pinched my feet.  I wore freakin’ makeup!  I NEVER wear makeup- but today, I wore makeup!

Well, I walked into the school district.  Under one arm I had a folder with copies of my teaching certificates and my college transcript, as well as an updated copy of my resume.  I went back to this office, introduced myself to the HR assistant, and handed him all my information.

Much to my surprise and disappointment, he wasn’t impressed and this wasn’t the end.  He just added a few pages to my application today.  Now, he says, he’ll pass the information on to the HR supervisor, who will review the info and pass it to someone else, and someone else, and someone else, and when they’ve ALL reviewed it, if they are still interested in hiring me, THEN they will contact me.

Poo.  But, as I wrote in an email to a friend tonight… my unibrow needed a “trim” anyway. (Yes, I have ridiculously thick eyebrows.  I spend far too much time attempting to control my eyebrow growth.)  Oh well.

It looks fantastic.  ‘Nuf said!

The painter/plaster dudes matched the color perfectly.  You can’t even tell where the damage was.  They also matched the plaster pattern of the ceiling.

FYI, since someone asked… Yes, the roofers paid for the repair.  They contract with a house-painting/plastering company to take care of all these repairs.  In fact, the painters said this is only the 4th or 5th roof/ceiling they’ve fixed for Ron’s Roofing, and they’ve contracted for Ron’s for several years.  They told me that it just looks like one of the roofers dropped a crowbar or some similar tool.  There was one guy on our roofing crew who was young (new??), so that’s probably what it was.

There are two guys at my house right now fixing our ceiling from where it was damaged (slightly) when we got our roof replaced.  Not real exciting… they’re nice guys and doing a good job fixing the ceiling.

This afternoon, I have a sort of semi interview thing with the Independence school district.  I’m hoping to walk in and stun them with my brilliance and intelligence, so much so that they hire me on the spot. :)  I’ll let you know how it goes.

For some reason it feels like my life has become extraordinarily boring.

It hasn’t, of course, but I am just struggling to find something to write about.

I am now officially a writer.  I’ve begun an outline for a manuscript which I will publish and sell through this website.  I’m also contemplating some other things- getting a trademark and domain for my “publishing house” and several other technical stuff.

I am attempting to become a substitute teacher.  I’m supposed to fill out an application online and, naturally, it’s not working.  So I’ve called people and left messages, and now I’m just hoping that this can get worked out so I can start subbing.

Given my lack of other stuff to write about, I am going to begin chronicling my adventures overseas.  Though many of these stories will be from my recent trip to the UK, I will also include stories about my trips to China, Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Japan, Guatemala, Ghana, Liberia, and Burkina Faso.  Wish me luck- I have many photos to sort and many stories to tell.  But I think this will still be a lot of fun.

From The Phil Factor:

If you haven’t brushed up on your Latin the title of this piece is the Olympic motto: Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Apparently that motto describes the athletes not only in the arena of competition, but between the sheets as well. As in past games, Olympic officials have distributed more than 100,000 condoms to the 10,500 athletes housed in the Olpympic village. That’s roughly 10 condoms per athlete. If you consider that some athletes won’t need them because they’re married, have an alternative lifestyle, or just monogamous, that means that someone is getting a whole lot of nooky. I wonder if the Olympic athletes have some unofficial records for some of the sports they participate in when the lights go out?

I have a friend who will be celebrating her 30th birthday later this year.  She’s planning on creating a trip to Vegas with her friends.  I’ve never been to Vegas, and I’d love to go, but Las Vegas travel can be expensive!  I hope I can go, but it all depends on how my bank account looks this year.  After paying for a trip to England, it’s kinda dwindling!

Now that the summer is (almost) over, I’m done traveling for awhile.  I spent the first part of the summer looking for travel and hotel deals, and it was totally worthwhile… going to Europe was AMAZING.  But now I’ll spend more time at home focusing on my manuscripts and stuff.  I need to contact the MO Secretary of State and the Dept. of Patent and Trademark Office… but I can’t tell you the whole story yet!  Don’t want someone to get in there and file a trademark before me!

I spent FOUR HOURS this afternoon filing.  I had a pretty good amount of paperwork that I needed to file, but beyond that, I also had to rearrange and reorganize almost all of my files.  It was just a lot of tedious work, shifting files around and finding new homes for all the files.

Now my eyes are seriously spinning.  I feel like I may be going crazy.  Hopefully I won’t have to do this again for several months… at least not the paper version!  I still need to catch up on all my tags and file organization on this website.  Oh well!

It seems like just yesterday that I updated to 2.6.  Now WP is telling me that I need to update to 2.6.1.  Seriously?  Updating is a big pain in the rear… I don’t know how to update automatically so I always update manually, and I have to go through file-by-file.  Blah!  Oh well… what can ya do?