April 02, 2002
anniversary
In the State of California, a California state senator is proposing a tax on popular soft drinks to help reduce obesity in children.
Meanwhile, hopes for peace between Israel and Palestine turn to ashes as everybody's favorite friends, Arafat and Sharon, succeed once more in making an utter cock-up of the process. My personal opinion: return the majority of the West Bank, split off Palestine, split off Israel, put Jerusalem under International Secular rule, build a Berlin wall to separate the two. Let each country take time to build a national identity separate from the other for about four generations. Would that solve the problem? Dunno. But then, nobody's asking me.
You wander offline for a few days and suddenly the world goes to hell....
I'm catching up, but slowly. My body's on April 1st, but my mind is on last Wednesday, for no particular reason that I can fathom. In today's Yuhri news: the interview, and what came afterwards, and the first anniversary.
First, the interview.
I had it on Tuesday, as rescheduled, and I thought it went rather well. I was, perhaps characteristically, unprepared for it, at least in the sense that I hadn't sat down and soberly attempted to memorize rote answers to rote questions. After all, I thought blithely, I've worked in an employment office and I've memorized those answers before. Besides, if they're going to hire me, they'll hire me, not some artistically rendered version of me.
It's cute how naive I am, isn't it?
I actually start all unemployment seasons like this, operating under some abstract notion of honor and truth in advertising that gradually wears away as the season wears on. This is the same deluded sense of honor that kept me loyal my last company while I was employed there, preventing me from searching for new work at a company that wasn't about to go under. At my previous job, it also kept me from working on my resume while employed, with the idea that this would somehow constitute disloyalty to the company.
In the case of the interview, it meant I spoke exactly the way I always speak, and answered the questions with my actual honest opinions. I was sniffling a little at the time and coughing a bit as well -- it turns out the allergy decided to be a cold, rat bastard that it was -- but I made very sure not to infect the nice lady with any of my germs.
I think.
In the end, she asked me to come back at the end of the week to meet with the CEO. "We'll schedule a time when I find out when he's free," she said.
Good sign, thought I.
Haven't heard from her yet. Should drop her an email and see what's up.
Okay. Heard from her. No worries.
Irishmen seem to have been put on this earth for the sole purpose of recovering my watch.
I like them.
It's a peculiar phenomenon, and I have to admit that it's a little bit freaky. I'll acknowledge that I've actually met Irishmen in the past that have had absolutely nothing to do with my watch. On the other hand, every time my watch has ever fallen off of my wrist, an Irishman has picked it up, chased me down, and returned it to me. It happened once on the escalator of CompUSA. It happened in a mall in San Francisco. It happened on Fisherman's Wharf. Once it even happened in my laundromat in Chinatown, and while I'll admit there was an Irish pub half a block away, really, no Irishman has any business being in Chinatown.
The watch is a present from my father for my sixteenth birthday, and it has -- as you might have figured out -- a loose clasp that makes it a little dangerous to wear. In the beginning, there was a little gold chain that held the two ends together in case the clasp came undone, but that fell off at some point during the last twelve years. The watch is one of the few things I have left of my father, excepting the poor eyesight, the tendency towards fat, the straight teeth and the inability to tell a story that has a point. Oh, and the power tools in my Mom's garage, though it's a little hard to wrap those around one's wrist and go for a jaunt in the City. ("Hey, lady, you know the time?" "Sure, just give me a second to plug myself in and make a clock.")
At any rate, it's from my father -- yes, the dead one -- so naturally it's a little precious to me. Somewhere in the afterlife, my dad was making note of the fact that the little gold chain fell off. "Well, that's no good," he was up there thinking. "She might lose the watch. Better assign her some guardian angels to keep that watch safe. I know, I'll give her some Irishmen. They're nice and appreciate beer and their names make me giggle."
Irishmen notwithstanding, I'm leery of wearing my watch now; who can say if the heavenly stock of Irishmen runs out, and I'm stuck having to depend on a non-Irish, union guardian angel?
The Guy and I have been dating for a year now, as of the end of March; that is to say, we first met at the end of March, and it's impossible to say exactly when we started dating, mostly because I have this whole problem with units of time.
Naturally we gave each other presents. We're Present People. Part of the reason I dislike being poor is because I like giving people things. (Once I get a regular paycheck back, you guys can send me your wish lists and I'll prove it.) As it happens, the Guy collects watches -- less harmful than, say, collecting fish, which have a habit of smelling bad once they've stopped twitching.
He got me a Seiko, that actually shows the date in a little window on the face. It appears to alternate between giving me the first three letters of the month and the first three letters of the day itself, in French. It's possible I'm imagining that. I'll have to get back to you on it. It's very very cool. I now know the time, or could, if I could remember that I'm wearing it. The Guy, who knows me well, no doubt realized that anything that combined Shiny and Yellow would be a big hit with Yuhri's little brain.
"See," he said while sizing it for me, "it's jewelry."
"It's not."
"It is," he insisted.
We've had an ongoing issue with jewelry. He wants to buy me jewelry. I don't want him to buy me jewelry.
Did I mention I'm an awesome girlfriend?
It takes a crowbar to remove this thing from my wrist, which saddens me a little because, with the exception of the Guy's brother, I won't ever get to meet Irishmen anymore.
In the meantime, I gave him this, quite possibly the coolest watch ever. Yes, it actually shoots. There is a down side to it, in that catapult arm has to be up in order to read the time, but c'mon. Minor inconvenience.
Am I not the coolest girlfriend ever?