Native plants

Can anyone identify this plant that showed up in our backyard in North Carolina?  There are 3 of them, between 30"-37" tall.

Eclipse Day

We left Georgia early this morning and drove to Pomeria, just outside Columbia,  South Carolina to experience the eclipse with Philip Clark and John Shealy at their house in the country.  The guys had their glasses ready and we're hosting a small gathering of friends.

The drive up to SC was easy but there was a lot of traffic on the way home afterwards.  It's been a busy weekend. 

A day in Atlanta

Spending most of today waiting in the car while MonsterMustDie shops for antiques.  I've had enough walking b around looking at dead people's stuff. At least we made it to a liquor store to get a few things we can't get in NC like proper maraschino cherries and bitters,  as well as cheaper booze.

We had lunch at Farm Burger, where the waiter dropped my salad dressing on the floor, causing it to splatter all of its contents on my shoulder bag, foot, jeans and T-shirt. Now, I have to wear the remnants the rest of today.

Update: We went to Junkman's Daughter for me to buy two new shirts for myself to wear to dinner. I wiped off as much of the dressing as I could from my bag and pants with paper towels and soda water. 

Dinner was great. I got over my unfortunate event earlier in the day. We met our favorite Soogs at Shoya Izakaya Japanese pub where I had good sushi and sake and sake. Then, we went next door for desert at Kula, a more family-style restaurant with food coming to the table on conveyers after orders were made from a tabletop touch screen. Everyone ordered ice-cream or frozen mochi. Lots of lively conversation as we all tried to catch up with each other. 

Working late

MonsterMustDie is still at work installing European lights at the Mill. I'm calling it a night now. Somehow,  he always manages to get into some kind of insane project just before we go on a long road trip. :(

time warp dreams

Thanks to SleepyTime Tea...

My dreams last night were a weird combination of American Gods and Doctor Who.

It was my college graduation day. Not quite the same because it involved my friends from Little Five Points and Womens Night combined, many of whom were working and living in an odd old apartment building that was filled with creativity and photographic opportunities.

It was raining off and on. My mother and brother and, oddly enough, my grandmother were there. My father was not with them because my parents were divorcing. My mother was insisting that I leave immediately with them in the car after the graduation ceremony without speaking to anyone else while saying "you're never going to see them again anyway" because I was meant to spend the rest of my life taking care of her. I turned around and walked away from the car and to the building where my friends were celebrating, never looking back. Everyone was welcoming me and offering me food and a place to sleep in the apartment building.

Next, I'm outside a large modern public building with Doctor Who and his companions. We all have the same color of red hair. We're fighting British red coat, revolutionary soldiers, who are firing at us with muskets.

dream reunions

I had a dream about a birthday party for Chet, a friend of my parents who has a son and daughter the same age as me and my brother. He and his wife were lifelong friends of my parents from the time they were in Jaycees together as young adults. The party was at a large house like my family's home or his home. There were several people who I realized in the dream were already gone from this life like my parents and my maternal grandmother.  There were also guests who were neighbors and family of Chet who I had not met before. At some point during the dream I realized it was actually a going-away party being thrown for him and attended by both the living and the deceased.

Mammogram

Photogram  images seem very appropriate for the waiting room of an office that provides mammograms.

Highly experienced. Bored. Broke.

I've spent 30 years at a career that is no longer necessary. I desperately need an entirely new skill set. 

Print is dead. Advertising is only for Account Executives with MBA's. Large publications are all produced in China now, even if the parent publishing company is here in the US. Most potential clients really do not see the difference between design that took several hours to perfect vs anything created with a MS Office template. I suppose it's just like the writer or journalist dilemma where everyone thinks they can do it for themselves.

Photography, as a profession, is dead - seems like everything can be made with a cell phone now to acceptable standards of the industry. Still images are dead, mostly. Animation (made in China) or video/film (still made in the USA) is the only desired way for producing images here for money. Everyone only wants recent graduates with degrees in Computer Science (preferably Masters, but in a pinch a Bachelors is acceptable). Oh, and there is no film industry I can find where I'm living now, anyway.

Yep. My industry is kaput and so are all of my career options. Now, I really wish I at least had friends here and hobbies to pursue and active neighbors or place I enjoyed hanging out at - if I had the money for it. 

If you can afford to, I say pursue your passion and just have fun and enjoy life. Unfortunately for me, I can not afford to remain idle but I can't find anyone to give me work here that I am qualified for. I can not manage the time to any classes to seek a new degree, which would take years anyway, and still keep my part-time retail job, which is the only work I can find here. Everything, even banks, only offer you 12 to 18 hours a week at minimum wage. 

Meanwhile, on a daily basis, MonsterMustDie tells how I need to find a way to make money. It always sounds he believes I'm just sitting around eating Bon Bons on the couch all day and not even trying. Everything on TV says I should have already found a way to create my own company. I should be on my third independent business venture by now. It does not help that I am not a salesperson with a perky-yet-aggressive personality. I wish I was perky. I am trying to will myself to be that. 

I did have one freelance job last month that I really enjoyed working on, for some business associates of MonsterMustDie and I have made friends with one couple who live in Greensboro and are of a very similar mind to us in most things. 

However...

That is all I have accomplished in three years here. Seems like everything has been two steps forward and three steps back since we relocated to North Carolina. Bad timing. Bad luck. That's all I can say. 

Surprise

While I was at work today, someone left an empty Jack Daniels bottle in the fitting room. The "bathroom thief" also struck again for the fourth time this month.  She's a woman who removes all the tags and sensors from  items and leaves them in one of the tampon disposal bins in the restroom - usually in the handicapped stall.

still trying

The countdown is still on for the life of my last retail job here. I managed to sell one credit card application this week and was reminded that I needed to sell nine more to make my minimum goal for a week. I have not been entirely cut from the schedule yet but I expect this job to end soon just because I am not a good salesperson.

I have seen co-workers, on their cell phones in the break room, calling friends and family to ask them to come in to sign up for credit cards from them so I know I am not the only one whose job is being threatened by the pressure to sign more people up for the store credit cards. All because a study found that people will spend 30 percent more a year at stores they hold credit cards at.

I am thinking my next work attempt will be bars and restaurants. That way, I could learn more about the service industry and, hopefully, pick places very close to home to try to work at. If I am working for tips or below minimum wage, I need to be close enough that I don't have to spend much money or time to get to work. My car is getting older and I don't need to be too dependent on it if I'm not making enough money to maintain it.

Happy Birthday

We are going through flea markets in North Carolina for MonsterMustDie's 62nd birthday today.  The heat and sun are already taking their toll on me.

update:

After listening to his incessant complaining about how I ruined his day of picking ( and yes, I did slow him down. He probably came home earlier because of me) I must remember to never go on trips with him again. I really thought it would be bad for me to have him spend his entire birthday alone but just the opposite was true. Next year, he will be blissfully on his own for the entire weekend. 

Evening at the Mill Village Collective

Tonight is nearly the end of the High Point Market and we were lucky enough to enjoy a dinner with all participants here with food served by Cisco Brothers. 

working for a living

Good news is that I have a small freelance job that will be the first graphic design gig I've had in 2017. Hopefully, it will lead to more work with the same client and their associates. I would love to find meaningful work again.

Bad news is I was, essentially fired from my remaining retail job yesterday due to my inability to sale the prerequisite amount of store credit cards to the public. I am simply not a sales person. Although credit card account sales is not specifically in my job description as a cashier and sales floor associate, every retail company does require a minimum amount of store-specific credit cards to be sold by all associates. At the risk of looking like a complete asshole to customers, I tried to promote the card yesterday, after my one-month termination notice, to every customer with zero results no matter how assertive I tried to be with it. I am not made for sales or retail. Never have been. I like working with the public and meeting people during the day but I'm useless in retail. And there is no value in retail wages or the low part-time hours.

Other people I know my age who have been displaced by the changing job market have gone into real estate sales as a new career. My retail experience tells me I can never do that.

Meanwhile, MonsterMustDie is being more assertive that I need to find a way to make money to contribute equally to the house. He insists I can make money still doing basic graphic design as an independent freelancer and he thinks I'll make money in photography if I start a commercial photo website. I don't know all the ins and outs of setting up a commercial website - I just make eye candy. And what kind of photos would I sell now? All of my old music business connections are gone. I haven't been out to a single show or club since we moved here to North Carolina. It is a desert here for me.

This makes me want to return to my little condo in Atlanta more every day, where I would have low cost of living in a tiny space and less dependence on my car and, maybe, some of my old work connections.

Really, I just want to work and make a reasonable amount of money for household expenses.
That, and make some friends here.

The homeless problem

I figured it out.
Conceptual (fantasy) children are much more attractive than actual children. Everyone has a fantasy child - the idea of a new perfect baby that grows up to be a hugely successful adult with the best of all qualities. Babies with that are blank slates far cuter than older children and adolescents.
Homeless adults and the elderly are not cute or attractive. Quite the opposite.
This is why so many people are anti-choice or but no one wants to help actual people. Animal shelters get a lot more money than homeless shelters. People will adopt puppies before they adopt children in foster care. Puppies are cute and, since they don't speak, you never know what's going on in their heads. I would say pets are a source of unconditional love but a lot of that depends on how they're treated and if there is kibble in the bowl.