Hey! I'm turning old.

I love Exploding Dog.

It was my birthday! For the first time, in a long time, I celebrated by myself. The first birthday I had to spend mostly by myself was my freshman year of college--I had just moved into the dorms and started school and I didn't want to be THAT person that loudly celebrates their birthday. I did, however, register to vote. I also got my foot cut up by a door because some poop head wasn't paying attention and swung the door into/onto my foot and opened a gash that left me bleeding and hobbling to a convenience store to buy band aids. Although I was partially at fault for choosing to wear flip flops to class but, to be fair, it was college, I was toying with the new sense of freedom unencumbered by high school dress code guidelines--I was living on the edge. And that was my 18th birthday.

I did like my birthday this year, because I actually managed to keep myself fairly busy--unlike any other day in the life of an unemployed. I made rice krispies treats (with sprinkles in them for a bit of panache) and chocolate chip cookies for my neighbors for driving me around when I had last minute errands and Jack was off at work with the car. Then I sat down and watched my DVR'd episode of Gilmore Girls--and it was one of my more favorite episodes (Season 6, Episode 9: The Prodigal Daughter Returns). I also made a quick dinner for one of the officer wives, who had just given birth a few days before, as part of a meal plan the other spouses had set up. After I dropped off the dinner, one the way back home, I picked up a tiny ice cream cake for myself. Finally, I settled in for a night of Dancing with the Stars with chicken strips and fries for dinner.

The day felt good and I enjoyed doing the little things for my neighbors and the officer wives. It might be the wisdom of years lived creeping up on me, but I do like the idea of making my birthday a day of service--or just doing something for someone else because damn, it fucking feels good. I've now realized (or at least I am old enough to admit this to myself) that I enjoy volunteer work and doing things for others, not because it helps to foster a sense of community, to bring people together, or that it is consistent with the idea that helping each other out is just what a civilized society does because we all live in the same community, but because I get a serious high off of people saying, "Thank you for what you do. You're so awesome." Seriously. It's better than crack and just as addicting.

It's the end of the world as I know it.

I haven't felt this dramatic since high school and yet here I am today because my hard drive crashed. Literally--crashed to the floor because I wasn't paying attention and my knee knocked over my laptop that was sitting on our coffee table. Even though the fall wasn't that high, it was enough to knock the life out of my hard drive. So now all it does is click. Click. Click. Click. Each successive click just reminds me of how broken it is--and how much money (money I don't have and I don't want to spend because I'd rather buy food) this is going to cost me.

I suppose this shouldn't bother me as much as it does, after all I still have my health, a roof over my head, and people that love me (despite my penchant for being dramatic when little things are broken), but it does!

Here are, currently, the little things that bother me, upset me, and otherwise rattle my sense of normalcy despite, really, not being that big of a deal (in the grand scheme of things):

• The hoard of fruit flies living and propagating in our trash can (and they've started to colonize the bedrooms and bathroom). I've set out a trap for the last week and it does nothing. Well, I actually inadvertently did get two flies with my opened bottle of wine, but the trap does nothing. I've rinsed out our trash can (making sure I take out all their little larvae), I've put in new liners and yet they come back!
• Our crappy cable box. For the price of cable, I feel that Time Warner Cable should really upgrade their cable boxes and stop re-purposing old boxes with terrible reception. Is it too much to want a receiver box that, well, receives from the remote?
• The price of cilantro at Harris Teeter. A bunch of cilantro should not have to cost $1.79. It's not even organic!
• The price to fix my laptop. I don't want to spend the money, but I think I will have to. It's my baby and my lifeline because I have everything on there. From drafts of resumes, my senior thesis, college papers I've written that I'm not proud of but I still keep them, to pictures of nearly everything I've done and seen, to my music (both legally, illegally, and questionably legally obtained), to funny cat pictures from the Internet that I've saved. A part of me is fine with throwing out the hard drive and just putting in a new one, but the sentimental part of me wants all those things back with a promise that I'll do a better job of backing up my files the next time around.
• My lack of job prospects. I am tired of going day to day waiting for a phone call and getting none. I'm doubly tired of the same rote answers that people give me when I call and ask when a response can be expected (even though I once had to give those same rote answers when people calls asking about the hiring process). I just want to know so that I can move on and continue sending out more resumes.

Perhaps it is because I have been unemployed for so long, and the more time spent not in a fulfilling 40-hour work week, the more the little things get to me. It's also possible that even with a job distracting me from the little things, I can still spend all my days thinking about and obsessing over it, but it would also give me a wider audience so that I can regale more people with my tales of woe rather than just Jack.

Moral of this story: Hope and pray that I can get a job soon so that I can put out more upbeat blog posts rather than complaining about how, seemingly, bad my life is.

Things I Will Find Myself Missing About Anacortes

I am someone who becomes attached to things very quickly. For example: In summer school biology class (that I took to get ahead), we had to create a bug collection (properly labeling the species and type) for our final class project. My friend Elisa had caught a caterpillar and dropped it into a jar for temporary storage before it was transferred to the the kitty litter-plaster of paris-acetone gas chamber. While it was in it's little holding cell, the caterpillar just made circles over and over again to the point where we named it Speedy. And once you name something, knowing that it will be dead mere hours later and pinned to a foam board, the act of killing it becomes heart wrenching. I assume little Speedy was eventually killed, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Just trying to remember it brings a tear to my eye.

That being said, knowing that I will be moving away from the Northwest, Seattle, and Anacortes is heartbreaking. For the short time that I have lived in Anacortes, I have grown strangely attached to this little town. Perhaps it is due to all the Gilmore Girls I watch and my secret wanting this town to be my Stars Hollow.

Things I will miss: This view.

These are the things I will find myself missing about Anacortes when we move away:

-The Senior Center. In this period of unemployment, I have volunteered at the Anacortes Senior Center as a way to keep myself from going crazy and also to just hone whatever skills I still have. But I like the place and the people that frequent the Senior Center. They are just characters. Most of them are what I imagine my friends and I will be like when we get into our twilight years.

-Stan, Yeong, and Mark the Skagit Transit Bus Drivers. They are awesome--when I get on they greet me by name, they know when I get off so if I happen to zone out they won't pass my bus stop, if the bus is running late and I need a transfer they know to call the bus driver ahead to wait for me. Yeong even brought me homemade kimchi one day when she found out I liked kimchi. They were the first people I ever talked to, on a regular basis, in Anacortes.

-The Seafood guy at The Market. I swear he's stoned most of the time, but I've never met anyone who's more excited about seafood than that guy. Plus, he remembered that I was from Seattle and what I did last weekend, thus making for casual conversation while he's weighing out salmon for me.

-The deer in the backyard who live under our porch. Sometimes I pretend they are like pets, but sometimes they are just a touch annoying what with the eating of the foliage and peeing on our lawn.

-Victoria radio, mostly like CJZN The Zone on Vancouver Island. It's a cute little radio station and they play great music and they're just so adorable in their little Canadian ways. Although I have yet to get used to their weather reports, as they measure the temperature in Celsius.

-Old Salts. It's a gas station mini-mart. But it's owned by a nice Korean couple, who make kimchi on the reg and sell it. Homemade kimchi, at a gas station mini-mart in Anacortes: Weird, I know, but so delicious.

Achievement Unlocked!

It only took me two months, but I have finished filling out the forms for my federal income tax return! Technically, it took me ten minutes to drive to the library and pick out the forms, leave/ignore the forms untouched on my desk for two months, wait for my appropriate W-2, 1099, and 1098 forms to arrive, 40 minutes to fill out a "practice" 1040A form, 5 minutes to realize that I did the math totally wrong (it somehow ended up showing that I owed $10,000 in taxes), and 30 minutes to refill the form on H&R Block for a more accurate assessment. Now all I have to do is mail it out--which ought to take another week or so.

After I was done, I was inordinately proud of myself. Then I had a craving for chicken wings from the Wheelhouse, but mostly I was really proud of myself. I am not sure whether it's because I underestimate myself and it comes as a surprise when I finish things or if I am just easily excitable, but I often give myself a self-five, no matter how small or large the achievements are, such as:

• Successfully programming the Comcast remote to our television
• Figuring out what that light switch in our living room turns on
• Making it up the hill, on the way out of Skyline, on my bike (well, any hill for that matter)
• Figuring out what is jamming the copy machine and fixing it
• Planning out what to make for dinner, thinking that I might be missing an ingredient, but when I look into the pantry or refrigerator there it is!
• Tasting chicken stock after it has been simmering for over three hours. Hellloooo, flavor country.
• Any time the seniors at the Center call me a "computer guru" because I know how to restart the computer, which usually fixes whatever problem they are having
• Successfully fixing the flushing thing/wand on the toilet
• Wandering into J.Crew and discovering that all they are offering an additional 30% off their already on sale items
• That one time I was thinking about making sangria and I walked into Crate Barrel at the U. Village they were having a sidewalk sale and I found a slightly dinged (but otherwise perfect) pitcher on sale for $6. We had sangria that night.
• Passing cars stuck in traffic while walking on foot (happened a lot when I lived in Seattle)

Although, I am also uncertain if I do this to keep me sane (reassuring myself that I am able to accomplish things despite the fact that I haven't worked in nearly a year) or if by continuing to do this I am going insane.

Where I talk about things I like: Downton Abbey

Ah, the marriage of two of my favorite shows: Parks & Rec and Downton Abbey.

[Note this: As a new goal I am going to put up a new post every Wednesday. I am attempting this to give my life a bit more structure than before, to make me think about topics to write, and to give me something to do on Wednesday afternoons. I say this knowing that if my friends read it, there's a good chance they'll call me out on it if I start to slip. So, it should be interesting.]

I am not normally a huge fan of period pieces, especially British period dramas because the plots drag on, I can't understand anybody because of the accents, and it's just so hard to care about British aristocrats, but I friggin' love Downton Abbey. It's the only reason I look forward to Sunday nights.

If you haven't already started watching the show, here is why you should like Downton Abbey, too:

1. Saucy Brits. You may have heard that the writing is pretty darn good on the show--and it is! It's like Dynasty for the late Edwardian-era set. There's Thomas, the conniving footman who's secretly gay and tries to blackmail a duke after the duke comes to Downton to try and woo Mary. There's Edith, who just hates Mary and has it out for her (and does she ever in the first series). Also included the in the first series: Pre-marital sexy times with a Turkish ambassador! The characters seems so much more interesting and less staid than compared with other period dramas (like the updated version of Upstairs Downstairs. Feh.).

2. Maggie Smith. Speaking of saucy Brits, Maggie Smith's character on the show is hilariously snobbish without being too pretentious about it--like when Edith was complaining that she might die a spinster, the Dowager Countess responds with: "Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class." Zing! Maggie Smith (I can't say her name without saying her whole name) can express just as much in a withering stare as in a well delivered line.

Dowager Countess' withering stare close up!

"I'm a woman Mary, I can be as contrary as I choose."

3. All the clothes look like they came from Anthropologie for the Edwardian era. That being said, I would totally wear the shit out of all those pretty dresses minus the corsets. I can barely go a full day wearing jeans, I think I'd pass out if forced into a corset.

4. Edith and Mary. Although their rivalry has been downplayed a bit in the second series, in the first series Edith goes after Mary at every chance she gets. There's this one scene where Edith is talking to Mary about her beau and Edith is like, "...So he slipped the hook." To which Mary replies, "At least I'm not fishing with no bait." Oh snap, girl just got told.

5. Response to early 20th century technology. It's interesting to see how the characters approach the new technology for that time, such as electricity and the phone. The Dowager Countess is afraid to sleep in a room with electric lighting because of the vapors; the downstairs help are similarly apprehensive of this new fangled contraption. When the house gets a phone, there's a few small, but funny, scenes with the house staff: Carson the butler practicing his telephone greeting and Daisy and Mrs. Patmore don't know how to act when the phone rings. The telephone is so ubiquitous now that it's interesting to see how people might have responded when it was first introduced to the upper class masses.

6. It's on PBS. This point has nothing to do with the quality of Downton Abbey, but it's scientifically proven that if you tell people you watch Masterpiece Classic on PBS, they'll think higher of you. In their eyes, you now belong in the higher intellectual echelons like the people who read The New Yorker (and not just for the comics) or those who watch the legitimate new programs like NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Or they'll think you're over 65 and retired.