Several things happened this week that could be qualified as, well, complete and utter crap.
From least serious to most serious.
Smarty Jones lost. I don't know why I cared, but I did.
Carbon Leaf, which is my new favorite band and has been since Corina first introduced them to me last October, has a new album coming out on July 13.
In an effort to make my workday a little less like torture, I signed up for Rhapsody, which is an iTunes-ish on-demand music service through which you can listen to whatever you want for the monthly fee, and download what you want for an additional 79 cents per song.
The new Carbon Leaf album showed up on Rhapsody last week. I listened to it, many times, loved it, planned to download it at home. (I was still going to buy the actual album when it came out, as these are five kids from Richmond and I want to help them out. I actually bought the CD Corina originally burned for me, I really did.) But when I logged in earlier this evening, I discovered that it had been removed. The playlist is still there, but all greyed out. Buh-bye.
So the lyric today is brought to you courtesy of a few lines I remember of a song that I love and will not get to hear again until July 13 and I am bitter.
(Silver lining: They will be playing the 930 club in DC on July 17, so I will very likely be hearing it live shortly after I hear it on the CD. Woo.)
Next up is my attempt to see Harry Potter.
As much as I wanted to continue the tradition of going to see it on opening night with the girls in Philadelphia, the inability to give up a few valuable hours of work during a week which was already short a day, plus the insane price of gas, meant that it was just not economically feasible.
But I still needed to continue my tradition of seeing it on opening night, period, so my friend Sally and I made arrangements to see a 9:40 show on Friday night.
We arrived at the theater shortly after 9:00 and were puzzled to see many, many people standing around outside, in the rain. We were also further puzzled by the presence of police cars.
We walked up to the edge of the crowd and asked someone standing there what was going on. She said that she thought there was a fire alarm, as there were fire trucks there before, so maybe one of the projectors caught on fire or something.
We stood there a few more minutes until a woman with a loudspeaker issued the news that all shows before 10:00 were officially cancelled.
Bastards.
We were pissed off. SO. PISSED. OFF. I had been looking forward to this movie all week, and particularly after the day I had (more on that in a moment), and there was just no way any other theater would still have tickets available, so we were pretty much screwed. (I went back on Saturday to get my refund, and the ticket girl told me there was no actual fire, it was just some punk who pulled the fire alarm.)
God dammit. So we went out and got drunk (well, okay, it was just me who got drunk, from one very very potent drink, after which I understood why the bartender issued forth with a "Ha!" when I ordered it) and on the way to the bar bought tickets over the phone to a show Sunday afternoon at a lovely theater in Georgetown.
(Silver lining: We did get to see the movie, and it is beautiful and magical and moving and splendid and extraordinary and all manner of adjectives that mean that I will have to see it again very very soon. Even the closing credits were gorgeous. I also got to shop a little in Georgetown, hello, lovely Philosophy counter at Sephora.)
Now. Something happened on Friday that made me want to just pack it in.
I e-mailed one of my supervisory types from the firm I was at before, from November through March, just to say hello and see if she wanted to get together for lunch. She e-mailed me back and said sure, and in the e-mail also mentioned that one of the other contract attorneys I had worked with had been hired there permanently as a staff attorney.
I had to leave my workstation to go to the ladies room because I knew I was going to cry, or throw up, or both.
I worked my ass off at that place. MY ASS. I was there while in rehearsals for the play, and there were nights where I went back to the firm after rehearsals and stayed until 2:00 a.m. I did great work, was complimented over and over again by the partner, was told by everyone how much they valued the contribution I was making, how glad they were that I was there.
And then one of the other guys, who had basically spent the entire assignment sitting in a storefront reviewing documents (while I was in DC drafting motions and interrogatory responses), he gets a fucking job.
There are probably other factors involved, but as far as I can tell, the primary reason he was hired and I wasn't is because he went to GW's law school and I didn't.
I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. Like I needed yet another reminder of what a total loser I am as a lawyer.
(There is no silver lining for this one. I'm just fucked.)
There were some good parts about the week, I am compelled to admit.
My Buffy Season 6 arrived on Friday.
Michelle and I had Five Guys for dinner on Saturday night because she had never been there, which is just crazy, as that is the only place I ever take anyone who visits me and she lives here, and then we proceeded to drink a bottle of wine while watching the National Spelling Bee for three hours, even though we knew who won. We marveled about the fact that no one found us exciting enough to date.
I had breakfast today with a friend of mine from my job last fall who I hadn't seen in a couple of months, and it was good to catch up.
I cleaned and scrubbed and reorganized the hell out of my kitchen.
Good things all.
I think it's good that I kept a little busy this weekend. I think it's good, because otherwise I'd have been way too tempted to spend the entire weekend having a nutty on the couch, listening to the rain, living in my head, in my latest fantasy life.
In this, Elizabeth's Dream World, I sell everything I have, everything that is worth anything, which isn't really much. What I have left over, whatever books and CDs and furniture no one wants, goes into my car, along with my cat, and the laptop I have purchased with the proceeds of my stuff.
I drive south on 395 until it turns into I-95, and I drive south on I-95 until I get to US-278, and I drive east on US-278 until I reach my brother's house on Hi1ton He@d Isl@nd.
I unpack my car into the spare bedroom.
I get a job at the Barnes & Noble, or the leasing office of a vacation rental company, or an island t-shirt shop, or the front desk of the hotel where my brother works, or the box office of the arts center where my sister-in-law works. I clock in, I smile and nod and help people get their books or rental keys or t-shirts or hotel rooms or theater tickets, I clock out. I spend my days off in my room or on the beach, writing the novel I've been writing, or haven't been writing, for years. In the evenings, I play Xbox with my brother, and my sister-in-law teaches me how to cook. We watch movies and go shopping and cook barbecue on the back porch.
I work, I sleep, I read, I write.
I leave everything else behind.
