I left my old work without the intention of returning, though at the time, I thought I was going to stick with school and go straight through for the PhD.

Ha ha!

I should have known better; by the time I actually left work, I was already starting to feel the massive burnout, and the fall semester of 03, where I stupidly took 5 classes when I didn’t really need to, turned it into an especially acute case. In the spring, I signed up for 3 classes and ended up dropping one. One of the two classes I kept was a course in which the requirement was ’show up’. Homework was optional.

The other was my last requirement for graduation: the project. That got finished, at the last possible minute, thanks in part to J and Bob.

And so school was then done. I couldn’t face going back again for more, and had no real clue what I would have done for a thesis anyway. Thus began a somewhat unenthusiastic search for work. The burnout left me lethargic and apathetic, much as it had after my first brush with graduate school in the summer of 99.

But things were different now; Bob was not at a good job, and has, in fact, spent most of the summer driving himself insane by working 70 hour weeks at two jobs that are, bluntly, not good enough for him. I told myself that I had until mid-August to come up with something, and after that, I would have to get some kind of position so that he could drop one of his.

My old boss emailed me several weeks ago, and I put off replying to her. I knew from other people that they had never hired anyone to replace me, and something about her email made me think that if I asked, I could probably go back. But… I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go back. The pay is not great and the job is a dead end.

But in the end, it’s better paying and better than retail. So I finally emailed her back, and will be starting there next Tuesday for an amount of time that at present is indeterminate.

I’ve not been doing much for the past two weeks other than watching the Olympics. I don’t know why it is — I, as everyone who knows me can attest, am not a big fan of sports. I’ll make the occasional exception (I <3 figure skating) but this is a pretty solid rule as rules go.

But when it comes to the Olympics I just can’t get enough. Which is why it frustrates me so that we live so near to good coverage (Canada) and yet so far (we only get one Canadian channel). NBC, with their choppy coverage and slick editing, just annoys me more than it pleases. They skip athletes, they carefully edit out bits to skew the coverage — it’s the ultimate reality show to them, and you can never be quite sure they’ve shown you everything that would allow you to really know what happened.

We’re in the down swing now, as most of the lengthy tournaments are starting to come to an end; for some reason NBC thinks that everyone wants to watch the whole of the basketball games, as if they couldn’t watch whole basketball games any day of the year on one of the dozen sports cable channels that everyone in the US is forced to contend with. But god forbid they show all 8 of the gymnasts who competed in a particular event.

Oh. My. God.

I left this show off my list of Television shows whose DVDs I would buy immediately simply because I figured the odds of it ever being released in a format I would purchase — ie, season sets — was zero. Zilch. Nada.

But I guess I shouldn’t have lost hope — they ARE releasing Jem! in season sets, after all.

Now, will She-Ra see the light of day again? Only time will tell…

Well, according to Wired, freeiPods.com is not a scam. I’d seen some other people trying to do it, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon.

The only catch is (there’s always a catch!) that one’s referrals all need to appear to come from a different postal address. Which makes sense a bit, I suppose.

Anyhow, here is my referral link — it’s an interesting offer, though I’m not sure how long it’ll actually be sustainable.

No, it’s not that I’m tired, though I should be that also. It is that for some reason, there seems to have been a recent resurgance of Cowboy Bebop worship in the corner of blogland which I hear about.

And so, I naturally felt the need to add my dissenting voice. Cowboy Bebop is easily the single most overrated anime of all time. The animation is lovely, the music is so-so, the characters are eh and the plot literally puts me to sleep. Watching a 22 minute episode of Cowboy Bebop feels like 22 hours. The minutes drag by and I start checking the clock, desperately hoping that it’s nearly over.

This is not an accusation I make lightly: people who know me know that I am a good audience. I am easily sucked in and easy to please; there are very few movies and television shows I can’t at least watch the first time without enjoyment. (Which, of course, means I must pause to mention the most overrated television show of all time, namely Seinfeld.) I can stand filler, I can stand stock characters. But I can’t stand Bebop. It is dull.

The past few weeks have gone by really quickly.

A couple of weeks ago, I went with C. to see The Bourne Supremacy and to have lunch in Chinatown. It was good, though the day was ridiculously humid and thus made it feel about 20 degrees warmer than it actually was. We went to the Commons, and our show was 20 minutes after the cutoff for matinee prices.

On the up side, the movie was good, and I also now know where the Opera House is located.

Last weekend, E and I went to see Thunderbirds and had lunch at Brigham’s. Here I had the opposite surprise: the movie ticket was far less than I expected. At $4.50 for a matinee, it was, in fact, less expensive to go to the movie than to rent it as a new DVD from Blockbuster. That is just pathetic.

Also Pathetic are the “savings” at Kitchen Etc. The entire chain is going out of business, and their stores are plastered with signs saying “Everything Must Go” and “Big Savings!”, yet their maximum discount is presently 30%, and the majority of items are still only 20% off. That’s not “Everything must go”, that’s “ho-hum, let’s have a sale”.

Seen in Neil Gaiman’s blog:

I can’t wait!

Thinking about it, I think the flavor was coffee. I’m not sure where the vision of the sludge came from, though.

I had a weird dream last night. It didn’t seem to have much of a plot — I was watching television or something. I had a drink. It was some kind of powdered flavor which I was trying to mix into milk, but for some reason no matter how much milk I put into it, the stuff was still blobby and wouldn’t dissolve very much. It was sort of chocolate, but it was absolutely foul. And because I am compulsive, I had to finish drinking it, so I kept trying to put in more milk to cut the gross flavor.

I can’t quite identify what the flavor or the stuff was supposed to be — in my mind, I’m sure it was something which I’ve tasted before, but a name isn’t coming.

When I woke up, I felt queasy, and I’ve felt queasy all day. This is probably because I haven’t yet eaten anything at all, but the memory of the nasty drink just makes me not want anything right now.

I’ve been eating rather poorly the past few weeks. It’s hard, since I’ve been at home, where food is right nearby. I find it especially difficult when I get up earlier in the day; I’m not sure why, but I find it easier to avoid snacking at 3am than I do at 1pm.

So I made a resolution: this week I will not eat any desserts. No snacks at all. 3 meals a day I am allowed, but no ice cream, chips, cereal (I only eat that for snacks), and so forth. We’ll see how it goes. So far I’ve managed it (24 hours down!), but the snack commercials on television are tempting me way more than they usually do. Even for snacks that I don’t even like.

Here’s to making it to the weekend.