Three people who have thought of me with jobs...

...over the past 1-2 years:

1) My one (Romanian) colleague says I should go teach writing at the local community college, and when I say in so many words that it's not worth the precarity, he says that technically it's precarious, but in reality they always rehire the same people, and so I should try it.

(I tell him in so many words that promises mean nothing and that one enrollment cut or one person who doesn't like you, and you have a huge chunk of your income cut off suddenly, and that's no way to live, to which he says that it's a shame my expertise is being wasted, and I bite my tongue and choose to be silent rather than tell him that that's a problem for the employer and with the terms of their jobs, not with anything with me.)

2) After a phone conference with a(n activist) (lawyer) who I know through a civic group in the city that I used to live in, he asks me what I'm doing nowadays for work, anyways, and I tell him, and in the next month he sends me a post for a "boom or bust" organizer job where you need your own car and work like a dog for something that rapidly disappears, and that overall doesn't pay that much better than a restaurant job.

(I thank him for thinking of me, and tell him to definitely send me anything that he comes across, that seems like it would be a match for me.)

3) Out of nowhere, my one (lawyer) friend from Missouri texts me a pic of a job posting for a contract linguist.

((I thank her for thinking of me, and tell her to definitely send me anything that she comes across, that seems like it would be a match for me, and add that I've seen stuff like that and looked into it, but they work you to death at a deskjob for fifty hours a week and I'm kind of not into too many hours or that much deskwork.)

. . .

(I feel like I'm done working myself to death at shitty "jobs" where the status quo is them using you and feeding you promises. Yeah, of course I'd like something better and something with a higher income grade or where I could work into a higher income grade, but I'm not going to tolerate an intolerable status quo for promises. Too many years of my life were spent doing that.)

More new neighbor.

The other week like around 1pm on a hot sunny afternoon, I stepped out of my cottage and turned and went to go out through the backyard and into the back alley, and as I was passing on the back path between the back wall of the cottage and the small wooden fence that walls off the back of our yard, what do I see but a small quiver from this unkempt area by the bushes that side my cottage, and it's the small streaked-fur brown-and-light-brown bunny who is very small, and who doesn't know how to behave yet.

He just kind of sat there three feet away from me as I strode by, quivering but continuing to still chew, just sitting out there in the middle of the afternoon, in straggly uncut grass that only covered like his feet and a bit of his belly.

Outsmarting allergies.

The other week I was reading out on the front porch in the (college) town that I now live in, and I ended up chit-chatting some with the (West African) mailman, when he came around to deliver mail.

He was saying that his allergies had gotten so bad the past week, and that they're especially bad on the street that I live on and also one block over, but he doesn't know what it is that exactly triggers them.

I feel so lucky that I have finally figured out when I should ramp up my nasal spray in order to avoid seasonal allergies -- around tax-time, like April 15th -- and I told him as much, that I had started early this year with the nasal spray, and so I had avoided any nonsense with allergies, altogether.

Odd-for-me grocery habits.

Lately I've been occasionally buying the occasional (organic) gallon of (2%) milk, and a few weeks ago I used a coupon to get some (locally-made) cheddar at the local co-op, too.

I did that years ago with (locally-made) cheese in another city that I was temporarily living in for the summer, but I can't remember the last time I bought milk even semi-regularly, if I've ever even done that.

It really goes to show what a tight budget I lived on, for so long...  I really don't have the living space or habits of a "normal" person.

New neighbor update.

Since I met him, I've seen my new neighbor a few more times, the small streaked-fur brown-and-light-brown bunny who is very small, and who doesn't know how to behave yet.

One afternoon I look out my window because a small movement catches my eye, and there he is by the firepit in the backyard.

Then, suddenly, he bolts, as a large-ish grey squirrel languidly hops towards him and gets like four feet away from where he is, like reaching right by where he was, like twenty seconds after he's gone.

Another time, too, I go outside one afternoon as I'm talking on the phone, and there he is, and he looks at me and he just stays there, even though I came out to like within six feet of where he is.

Then, suddenly, like a minute later as I'm still standing there in the same position as where I had stopped right when I came out, he bolts, since I guess something freaked him out at that point, though damned if I know what it was.

Somehow I feel that it's animals like him who got close to humans to the point where it led to domestication, if they survived.

Update on my tennis shoes that I bought around the turn of the year:

The bottom is starting to wear through, on the sole and the heel, I do that much walking every shift at work.

I really don't wear them anywhere else, either.

Addendum.

I forgot --

When I was talking to my one (longer haired) and (less jumpy) front neighbor about employment stuff, too, I mentioned the pessimism on undergraduate career prospects, from some local guy who teaches at the local business school.

"Fuck those people," he was like, automatically, without even listening to what I was saying.

So, I let that pass by, and I explained what I was saying, again, that even the business school didn't seem to be a good return, and the people who taught there recognized it.

Then, he seemed to realize he was reacting to something else, and mumbled something about how he thought I was talking about computer sci people, and though he didn't quite say it, you could tell he just took glee that even the computer sci people were running into trouble with employment, more.