Menial Monday

I'm really only blogging because I feel like I should, not because I have anything momentous to say. XD

I was informed I won't be getting any hours at work until January, by which point I probably will have found another job. With any luck I might be able to get a job at a real bookstore for the Christmas season. *crosses fingers*

In other news, I'm the only person in the house who isn't sick with a cold. *dons germ mask and hides in closet* Apparently one of the local high schools is four cases away from being closed for H1N1. This is the high school my little sister attends. *hopes little sister doesn't have H1N1*

Umm. Let's see. I also had some very yummy cake today, stuck a cookie on the end of an umbrella, and had a NaNo idea begin to niggle at my brain. We'll see how it goes.

And! I have a poll. Because I'm still stuck trying to figure out what makes Love Interests like Gale/Peeta, Edward/Jacob, Mr. Darcy/Mr. Bingham (did I spell that right?) so infatuating.

It should be over in the sidebar momentarily. =D

17 First Lines

When I'm at work and I have nothing to do/don't want to go find something to do, I hide in the English section and sneak-read bits of the good books. The other day I decided to make a study of the opening lines of all the fictional ones.

I discovered the following:

Of the 17 books...

1 forced me to read the rest of the paragraph.

3 were good, but I did manage to put the book back on the shelf.

2 were so long that they ran onto the next page.

7 described something (2 people, 5 weather), often with lots and lots of fluffy adjectives.

4 (5 actually, if we count the one that ran onto the second page) were the beginning of a backstory-dump. (1 of these dumps was interesting.)

0 began with dialogue.

0 began with an immediately evident high-conflict (or moderate-conflict) situation. (Although Golden Compass and Execution did come out with it pretty quick.)

0 began with any sort of interaction between characters.

Am I the only one who likes to open with the latter? Or are these statistics inevitable and purely resultant of the fact that I found these book in the English section of a university bookstore?

Thoughts, anyone?

I'd continue to ramble but I may be able to hash this out into a TWFT post for Sunday, so I'll stop now. :)

The Long Arm of Campus Security

Sorry. No Teaser Tuesday today. All the writing I did over the weekend was a touch morbid. I shan't subject you to it.

BUT! I got my first parking ticket today. Which I don't plan to pay. =D

I'm really quite proud of myself. It took them two and a half weeks to catch me. Now I shall have to start playing musical parking spaces. Parking in a new lot every day, nestling into a tight little spot where they'll be hard pressed to reach my windshield, hanging a lot of things from my rear view mirror so they have to squint for a long time to figure out whether or not I have a parking pass.

Assuming they'll threaten to tow my car after the third ticket, I should be able to keep my job for another nine weeks or so, before I can no longer safely park in the parking lot. Then I shall have to find a new employer -- ooo, look at that! Assistant Curator at the military museum. $13/hr. That sounds promising! =D

The Sea of Staples

Step 1) Remove staple.

Step 2) Move receipt to other side of paper. Re-staple.

Step 3) Place paper in correct alphabetical spot in mammoth binder.

Step 4) Repeat.

That's what I did for eight hours straight today. XD I went through three stapler-fulls of staples and created a very impressive mountain of used staples.

It wasn't so bad, though. It meant I got to sit in a non-boiling room and listen to my ipod all day while daydreaming about my characters.

Hehe.

Tomorrow, I suspect I will get the pleasure of photocopying the alphabetized OSAP forms. =D

Oops. =D

Just a quick update to let everyone know that if you're setting up a phone system, it's a bad idea to make people dial 9 to get to an outside line.

Hehe.

I was phoning people about their book orders today at work. We have to dial 9 to get out. I was making a long distance phone call, and I accidentally double-clicked the 1.

Campus security promptly arrived.

I rolled my chair away from the phone.

XD

Minimum Wage

Warning: The following post contains a rant.

Working for minimum wage ($9.50 here) is lousy.

Working for minimum wage means you get paid $76 for a full (eight hour) day. When those eight hours are spent on your feet doing menial work (let's say, oh, straightening books on a bookshelf), $76 seems like a major rip off!

It seems to imply that a day of your life (24 hours) is therefore worth $228.

If someone came up to you and offered you $228 for a day of your life (as in, you would have one less day to live) would you agree?

I wouldn't.

*stops grumbling*

We shipped some books to someone in Jamaica the other day. (Or was it only one book? Can't remember.) Her name was Donna and the shipping cost $75 - an entire day's salary for me. Probably more than an entire day's salary when you take taxes off.

Have you ever considered what kind of a percentage the government gets of your salary between income taxes, sales taxes, parking meters, road test fees...Okay, I'd better not get going on that can of worms. =P

Anyway, I'm off to enjoy my free time! Ta-ta!

Word Wednesday (and other stuff)

I got a job! *prances around*

I mean, it's minimum wage and sounds like brutal hours, but heck, it's MONEY!! *is broke*

I'm going to be working in the college bookstore, which, sadly, seems to mostly sell text books, but again, IT'S MONEY! Also, I get the impression I'll be doing less book-selling and more coffee-fetching/loose-paper-sorting. It sounds like I'll be some sort of manager's assistant, or something of that nature.

Goodbye, free time! Hello, money I can use to pay off that library fine!!

Okay. Now, onto Wordy Wednesday!

triage |trēˈä zh; ˈtrēˌä zh |noun1 the action of sorting according to quality.2 (in medical use) the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.

Because they use it on M*A*S*H all the time and I wasn't 100% sure what it meant. And:

fyke |fīk| (also fyke net)

nouna bag net for catching fish.

Because I hit the F key at random and when I realized that only gave me words that started with 'fa' I added a Y. And I might actually have the opportunity to use this word in my WIP, since my MC's family spends a lot of time on fishing-ish boats.

Oh, also, I have a longwinded, convoluted post over on the TWFT blog. Which you should go look at if you haven't already. =D