One Month of Doneness

I finished yo-yoing the CDT a month ago. It took me 10 days or so to get "home" to Emeryville, and since then, I've finished one book (Stegner's Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs), seen 7 movies (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Queen, 3:10 to Yuma, The Passenger, Cars, Pan's Labyrinth, The English Patient), inquired about/applied for 6 jobs (of which I seem to have landed an indeterminate number between 0 and 3, inclusive), gone running a handful of times, decided that I should volunteer at the Oakland Public Library or the People's Grocery community garden that's across the street but not actually done much about it, started eating vegetables on a regular basis, got a new computer (thanks Dad!), discovered that it annoyingly doesn't work with the wireless network in my house (but does work with other wireless networks), I've been on hold with Apple for the last 15 minutes, and I can't tell whether the robot voice is telling me the wait time is 15 or 50 minutes.

OK, apparently it was 15 minutes. I took the computer in to the Apple store, and they're taking a look at it, but I'm guessing they won't find anything wrong with it and will blame it on my router (despite the fact that the computer I'm on presently finds the network just fine.) I had to wait in line forever before a "genius" could talk to me, but I did manage to get the one non-smug employee in the store, and I did enjoy the Spongebob Squarepants kids typing game I played to pass the time. Anyway, that's probably more than you care to know about my computer woes.

It's really kind of weird for me to be having computer woes at all. I spent all day yesterday alone in my house with four different computers booting and re-booting and trying to get the network to function and dealing with tech support and bla bla bla. When computers would hang or fail to find the network, I screamed unrepeatables at the top of my lungs and got just as frustrated as when I was postholing (breaking through the not-sufficiently crusty top layer of snow and sinking to your hips) in the San Juans, but when I was in Colorado, I never once thought, "I wish I was indoors in front of a nice warm Windows blue screen right now," but yesterday I would've gladly gone for a hike in some waist deep snow if I could've.

So yeh, I'm messing with computers, and I don't have a job yet. I thought it was going to work out at Wilderness Exchange, but I haven't heard from them in a while. Now I'm pretty sure I've got a job at Any Mountain, but it's more of a winter sporting goods store than a gear shop and mostly just reminds me how much I hate the fact that America's economy is fueled by credit card debt and sprawling suburban McMansions. So hopefully I'll hear from Marmot Mountain Works, which actually has real gear. I didn't look into them for a long time because I assumed because they're a real shop they'd have more permanent employees and wouldn't need people for short-term, but I might've been wrong.

I do have a job lined up for next semester (I'm a TA for Econ 1) so all is well. Everyone that doesn't like teaching tells me this will be a horrible experience because the teacher really cares about teaching and that makes a lot of work for the TA's, but since I actually like teaching, hopefully this will work out. Since I've never TA'd at Cal before, it's also kind of the only position I can get in the department, but after having TA'd and becoming familiar with the class I'll be able to confidently and easily make some extra money by tutoring.

I'm still enjoying the Law & Economics classes I'm sitting in on, but they end soon, so hopefully something to occupy my time will come up soon. Otherwise I may just board a train, travel around the country, and rack up some credit card debt of my own.