RBOW/PC (Random bullets of whining/positive crap)

• The postal service destroyed my diploma!  Some douchebag mail carrier threw the oversized package over the back fence of my ugly little garden apartment, and didn't think to leave me a note saying that I could find a delivery there.  I never go out there except when I have to ask my worthless fucktard neighbors to shut up at 3:00AM.  When I discovered the package, it had been collecting rainwater, muck and mold for two weeks solid.  Insert obvious metaphor here.  *Anger*
• The longer lived of my family's two dogs had to be put down last week.  I'm more at peace with this than a lot of people might be: he was really, really old for a dog, and had many health problems, and his quality of life had slid down the scale too far.  He really should have been put down about six months or more ago, when his hind legs became too weak to hold him up for more than a few seconds.  But my poor mother couldn't bear to think of it.  She lived alone with the dogs after my parents got divorced and my brother and I moved out of the house, and now she really lives alone.  I feel less sorrow than relief for the poor old hound — as my girlfriend at the time observed to me after meeting the dog, "He's very sweet...but he needs to go to puppy heaven."  My dominant emotion towards the whole business is concern for how my mother will cope.  Coping's not one of her strengths in general.  *Fret*
• Working for my friend at hir office has refreshed my memory of how much I despise working in windowless places for eight-hour shifts, doing the bidding (and filing) of other people to earn a paycheck.  Hate, hate, hate.  I seriously wonder if I would have opted for this over unemployment, had the employer been someone other than a much-loved friend who needed help in a pinch.  My hatred of the work is compounded by the fact that today, while attempting to do something smart with the accounting software, I somehow managed to erase all the record numbers from all the transactions the office has ever recorded.  It could have been way worse — all the accounting itself remains in good condition, and the money is where it should be — but it won't do to leave the record numbers off.  I shall have to spend all of tomorrow re-entering them by hand, poring over all of the office's old receipt books.  *Hate*
• I'm dealing with more of this real-world grown-up stuff at once than I would prefer.  At the same time that I have to figure out exactly which ass-reamingly high interest rate Bush Jr. and his shitbag cronies have foisted on my student loans, I have to start getting my apartment ready to vacate in a month, which requires finding long-term storage for my life personal library.  (When it comes down to it, I own few possessions of value, other than the books I have amassed.)  I also need to figure out various other logistic bits and pieces relating to my upcoming postdoc in Research City, none of which I find particularly pleasant.  *Grumble*
• Simultaneously, I'm supposed to be powering my way through all these library books I've borrowed from DOU while the opportunity exists.  Would anyone like to guess the ratio of Books Read/Books Still Collecting Dust On My Living Room Floor?  *Shame*
• I'm also supposed to be getting my article ready to send out, but I've been waiting on Dr. Awesome for weeks, since zi has, apparently, just returned from yet another trip abroad/out of town/to Mars.  My brain is all worn out from the past two years' feverish activity — okay, really, the feverish activity of October to May — and I cannot fucking read my own work straight and determine its strengths and weaknesses right now.  Why, oh why can I not locate Awesome?  Oh yeah: because I have to spend all day cooped up in a windowless office space fucking up my friend's accounting software, and can't just go to campus as is my wont.  *Mutter*
• Wasn't I supposed to have more of a life now?  Fame, fortune, at least a regular job and possibly the opportunity to meet some unattached women looking for unattached men?  I guess not.  I suppose I'm not unique in wanting my immediate postdoctoral life to feel like a side character in a mid-1980s Woody Allen film.  I'll get used to it soon enough.  *Sigh*

I can be so negative so easily that I have to forcibly remind myself that my life doesn't actually suck by most measurements.  In support of this positive-minded project, I offer a few more bullet points of a different hue:

• I have what I think is a preliminary interview coming up in a few weeks for Totally Awesome Job (henceforth to be known as TAJ).  I'm nervous and excited.
• I'm still in somewhat tenuous contact with a press about First Book Idea.  It's not as though literary agents are beating down my door while Truman Capote looks at me balefully over a martini, but I feel optimistic that this press seems to see some promise in what I've shown them so far.  I'll have to generate a proper First Book Proposal if this is going to go anywhere, but that just requires the sudden short-order pressure of an impending phone call.  (I work best under pressure.  This was true when I was twelve years old, and it remains true today.)
• I'll get to spend some quality time with my family in about a month, once I pack up and leave DOU-Town.  As aggravating as they can be, I've missed them, and it will be good to spend some unhurried time in their company.
• I get to start my postdoc in Research City this fall!  That, my friends, is awesome.