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So, that was an ordeal. I just spent … about three and a half hours of my day trying to apply at one Wal*Mart. The actual application process only took about half an hour, but here’s the rest:

First, I walked back to that first screen-printing place (right across the street from the bus-stop), the one that was friendly, and tried to be persistent but friendly. They still don’t want me, but perhaps they’ll remember me now. That took maybe five minutes.

Then I walked back across the street and waited at the bus stop. Either due to extravagently bad timing or the broken-down bus I saw on the route later, I waited around 40-45 minutes waiting for a bus that runs every 30 minutes. But I got on, rode the 10 minutes to the Wal*Mart, and got off. Then I crossed the Wal*Mart parking lot and went inside to try to apply.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Wal*Mart uses computers for everyone to apply at. It’s their “hiring center”, and in most Wal*Mart stores, it’s right up front in plain sight. In this Wal*Mart I could not locate it anywhere in the front 1/3 of the store. So, I got into the Customer Service line to ask where it was. About half an hour of people trying to return things without a receipt to a woman standing in front of a 3-foot-tall sign proclaiming no returns will be accepted without a receipt, or after 90 days, I got to ask if they were hiring. She responded that the computer for that was at the back, in the layway department. So, off to the back of the store I went, and there, tucked into a corner of a hole-in-the-wall was the “hiring center” with a young couple working together to apply, chatting in … russian? Something slavic. The male knew enough english to complain to me a couple of times about how many questions it was, and I waited patiently for them to finish.

About ten minutes after I got there, and before they reached the end of the application, they decided it was taking too long, quit, and left. Now, the woman at the Customer Service counter had told me it should take 20-25 minutes to complete, so I sat down and looked at the time. I spent exactly 25 minutes completing the entire process. And I had exactly 18 minutes left on my bus transfer to get back home. So, I calmly walked out of the store and back across to the bus stop. Which took eight minutes.

And I waited for the bus for another 9 minutes, watching the time disappear before I would be forced to walk home in the heat, and then, voila, it was there. Another 10 minute ride back home, and I got off at the same stop as a friendly-looking youg lady who happened to be walking nearly the same route home as I was. We made pleasant small talk, and she suggested that the other Wal*Mart, at 7th St, was hiring, and I should try there. She lives a couple blocks north of here, and works at the quiznos down the way. Maybe I’ll see her again.

Anyway, after the walk home I’d spent about three and a half hours applying at one place. Later today I’ll probably take this completed application down to the Fascinations in the neighborhood and see if I can get a job there. And, like most of yesterday, I’ll work on finding jobs I can do (and get to) in the listings online and apply for them as appropriate. I also spent some time yesterday working on my resume, and it now reflects my work in Pine reasonably well. Maybe I’ll post it later.

In clearing things around to make room for my things to move in, this turned up. If you right-click on this link and choose the “save file as…” or “dowload file…” or whatever equivalent option your browser has, you’ll be downloading a 2.1Mb printable PDF of the image below:

If you don’t know what Bucula is, you can try searching the archives, searching the internet, following the recipe, or ignoring this post altogether. For the rest of you, here it is in Janet’s original handwriting.

Just a quick post here.

So, I was out, walking around, stopping into businesses to see if they were hiring, picking up applications, all that stuff, working on a nice heat stroke…

I’d stopped by two screen printing shops and a printing shop to apply, and was about 3/4 of the way around to the third screen printing shop in the area when someone in a car driving by thought it would be clever or funny to throw raw eggs at me as I walked down the sidewalk.

They sped off, flipping me off from their little blue hatchback as I tried to figure out what was going on. Since I was on the right-hand side of the road they came up from behind me and got egg all over my back and side, and I couldn’t tell what had hit me until they were half a mile away. So, no license plate number. I stepped into a convenience store right there and took a couple of paper towels to wipe the bulk of the albumen off me (and buy a diet drink) before walking home.

So, now I’m going to go step into the shower, the start a load of laundry, get dressed again, go back out and try to get a job at the other screen printing shop in the area. Then I’ll come home and … I don’t know, figure out about dinner, maybe.

Sigh.

Who does something like that? Why? Middle of a Monday, and you’re out egging pedestrians in the high heat of the afternoon? What the heck?

As you may or may not be aware, a few years back I did the eDiets thing to great success. In a little under six months I lost around 37 pounds. It took me over a year to re-gain the weight after I stopped paying attention to what I was eating (and stopped paying eDiets’ fees). Of course, I’ve carried that weight around again for the last two, two and a half years now, and I’ve been meaning to get it gone and keep it gone. SO.

I signed up for eDiets again this weekend.

My starting weight is 218lbs (23% body fat according to my Tanita scale). My target weight is still 175-178, just like Fuck 50lbs to hell says on the right, there. Theoretically, if I lose weight at the rate they expect me to, I could be at that weight by Christmas. Realistically, if I start doing the Bowflex thing and start building muscle mass too, it’ll be sooner. Just in time for …uhh… swimsuit season? Anyway.

Because I’m a returning user to eDiets, I get a secret, special rate for joining again… basically around $60/year, less than $5/month. Of course, they charged me for the whole year, so I’m out almost $60 for that. But I’ll be able to eDiets through next year’s swimsuit season for no additional charges. Of course, last night Angela took me grocery shopping for the first time, using their shopping list.

I’d updated it a bit to accommodate Angela in my evening meals every day (as long as I’ll be cooking a meal every night), but due to the actual amount of food in containers available for purchase, it wouldn’t have cost me much (or any) less to not do so. Also, since there was very little food in Angela’s house to begin with, there were a lot of things I had to puchase that I won’t have to purchase next week, some items for months, and I ended up having quite a lot of things to buy. And then, by the end of the shopping trip I remembered what eating on the eDiets plan was like before: I bought about three times the volume of food I would otherwise eat, at almost twice the cost, and by eating it all I’ll lose weight. That’s right. Eat more food, lose weight.

Of course, some of that has something to do with what foods you eat.

This morning, for instance, they tried to get me to eat three slices of toast with peanut butter and wheat germ on them, plus two cups of milk and some fruit cocktail. I mixed the peanut butter and wheat germ while I sliced the toast, then spread it on… couldn’t taste the wheat germ, really. Poured myself a big glass of milk (probably only 12oz instead of 16oz – I’m not a big fan of drinking milk)… And I got through only two and a half slices of the peanut-butter-wheat-germ-toast before I was too full to eat another bite. I swallowed down the rest of the milk anyway, and I’ll have the fruit a little later, but MAN this feels like too much food. Maybe I should see if I can switch to a ‘grazing’ plan… though that might be harder to do when I get work. We’ll see.

Lunch today is supposed to be a frozen entree, 2 cups of salad greens with 5 cherry tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of sliced almonds, and 2 tablespoons of lowfat salad dressing, plus another 12oz of milk, 4 squares of graham crackers and another piece of fruit. We’ll see how much of that I can get down before I’m too full to eat.

Last time I did eDiets, due to a combination of too much activity (I was riding my bike as much as 100 miles a week in addition to light general activity) and the fact that I can’t eat so much food as they schedule for me I frequently lost 3lbs a week instead of the maximum-recommended 2lbs a week. They get pretty upset when you do that. Not healthy, I guess. But for me, for instamce for lunch today, I expect I’ll start with the salad while my frozen entree cooks, then eat all of that, and be too full to eat graham crackers and fruit. Fruit I can eat for a snack between meals, but I doubt I’ll be hungry enough for the crackers later, since I’m cooking a nice dinner tonight (fish and rice and salad and fruit – I’m switching Wednesday’s fish dinner to today because the fish I bought is already starting to smell stronger than it should and I don’t want it to turn before I get to it), AND have a scheduled snack for later on.

Sigh.

Anyway, expect to see the weight at right update at least once a week, and to go down. I’m off to brush my teeth and then go out and see about getting work.

Sorry I didn’t mention this last night at 3:30 AM when it was finished and online, but I’ve just put a little changing graphic on the front page of ME behind the login/search bar that changes every hour as the day goes on. Wanted to fulfill what I said about having it done ‘before the week [was] out’, and Sunday night seemed like the latest possible time to do so… you know, before the new work-week began and everyone started looking at the site again.

I’ll probably put in a little field/drop-down-list for you to select your time zone after a day or couple/few days. I’m eating breakfast right now, and then I’m going out to start applying for work. Having dad not live here makes a difference, so I may be able to get the time zone cookie-maker in place pretty quick. Hopefully I’ll also be able to get a job pretty quick, too. Money is something I need. World-wide customizable time-of-day self-changing graphics is not so much.

Feel free to comment on the day/night thing here.