November 1–2, 2001 — Unemployed, but in good spirits

Well, the week has ended and there’s still been no word from any of the stores at which I dropped off my résumé. It looks like Nathan was right and that I’m not cut out for retail after all. If the Chapters location that Jess is trying to get me a job at isn’t hiring, I’ll probably give up until after Christmas — it’s not like I’m going to run out of money before then, it just would’ve been nice to start breaking even.

And speaking of not breaking even, I still haven’t paid rent for this month. I should get on that...

Yesterday night I went over to Jeff and Amy’s house for a few hours. Since I’d last visited, Jeff put nails into the walls and placed records on them. It looked like a store. We took some of the records down off the walls and listened to them and to some CDs. Johnston dropped by once he was done with class and Amy heated up some Turkey for him. It was late by the time we left.

I didn’t stay awake for very long. The person that I usually talk to on AIM wasn’t online, which was alright since my arms were kind of hurting anyway.

Earlier yesterday, I made a lot of phone calls and didn’t really get through to anyone. It was sort of depressing. And the one person that I was able to talk to said that he would call me today to have a more detailed conversation, but he never called back. So I went to bed early (read: at 3:30 am) last night for nothing.

But yes. It’s almost 11:00 pm on Friday and I still haven’t really started my day. I woke up reasonably early, but by the time I’d eaten and showered, a package from home arrived with lots of Hallowe’en candy and the second Harry Potter book in it.

So I spent the afternoon spoiling my appetite with Hallowe’en candy and reading the second Harry Potter book all the way through. The book design on the second one wasn’t nearly as good as it was on the first one. I kept finding mistakes, and they distracted me for the first few chapters. If I’m not careful I’ll start being as obnoxious about bad book design as I am about bad Web design, without really being all that competent or educated in either field.

After I finished the Harry Potter book, I went out for pizza, figuring that I shouldn’t be trying to survive on candy alone. I’ve stopped getting single slices from Pizza Pizza since Amato’s isn’t that much further a walk and since it ends up costing about the same for a slice of pizza and a drink.

While I was there, I think I saw some people from the Panic show last week. It’s strange seeing people in Toronto whose names I would probably know if they were from Ottawa but who I feel too shy to even look at for very long for fear of getting caught.

On the walk home, I saw a person trying to push an inebriated-looking person down the street in a wheelchair. He wasn’t moving, though; the person pushing noticed as I walked by that the other person’s arm was in the spokes of one of the wheels.

Most of my friends have asked me over the last week when my birthday is. I guess I can give up any hope of it passing without anyone noticing.

And speaking of non-sequiturs, I’ve started to become very interested in rubber stamps. I want to learn how to make them. For now, though, there’s a rubber stamp supply store (no, really) in Toronto that I’m going to visit. I’m hoping they have stamps that let you move the letters around to spell different things. And nice black card stock. And silver ink.

It’s always entertaining to go into stores like these because they end up being filled with folk-art supplies targeted at the types of people who would go to classes entitled, “A Sumptuous & Elegant Bookcard” (and people who take their greeting cards so seriously that they call them bookcards). I’ll no doubt be surrounded by rubber stamps covered in pictures of angels and snowmen and classic, pre-Coca Cola versions of Santa Claus. But they’ll probably have all sorts of nifty inks and papers and pens, so it will be worth the odd looks that I usually get in stores like these.

I want to finish the Cuff The Duke page tonight, and I want to get started on some back-end stuff for the m@b page. My Friday nights are the envy of Friday nights everywhere.