2 Months

Well, sorry for the prolonged absence. You see this picture to the left? This is what my life has become. The cat and TV. As much as I try to avoid them both they're just sort of constantly around.

I guess I should update a little bit - I went to NYC, I had a very good time with some friends and some Brazilians. Then I went home and spent some time with my mom and Khadoujah. Mostly, though, I ate a lot of good food. Because that's half of a good vacation.

And my job, well, seems to continuously extend itself beyond the horizon. Its end is a mirage that I keep thinking I see off in the distance - but I have relatively little hope of ever actually getting there, even at this late date (we originally talked about the job being over in September). Things are better, I'm not calling up ridiculous numbers of organizations anymore. It's not so much of an "all seems lost" situation like it used to be. But I'm not feeling great about it.

I don't have much time to spend looking into future housing or income (free time isn't very easy to get when you live and work in the same house as your boss), so what little I've looked into is also kind of dismal. I'm really hoping this is the low point in my life. I don't like thinking about anything more depressing than this. A few highlights:

-Liz said she had a client who rented properties who had one near USC for $400/month (incredibly low for L.A.). I didn't expect much. The broken door, bad neighborhood, peeling paint, fine, I saw that coming. But I didn't expect it to smell like poop and the ocean. Or that it seemed to have the plumbing/design of a janitor's closet from the 1920's. The bathtub scared me. But what was worse was that there really wasn't any work in close proximity. Thankfully that ruled it out for good.

-One of the things that I like about living with my family in L.A. is that their neighborhood friends are always suggesting ideas for work and study. One neighbor left a message the other day about a job starting at $17/hour with paid 3 month training. But it sounded in the message like she said it was because there was a shortage of lobotomists. I was relieved to find out that she'd actually said "phlebotomists." These are people who are trained to take blood. So maybe not such a bad job, right? I'm not sure. There are things that would be difficult to come by for this program - it requires you to have health insurance, CPR certification, a list of immunizations, etc. But quite honestly, I might just avoid it because I don't want to know what all "specimen processing" involves.

I'm gonna stop there. I wrote more but it just starts to get pessimistic. You know what though? I don't think anyone really reads this blog for travel updates. I'll still do them, but I think I'm just going to start using this for more general writing. Whatever I feel like. What do you think?