It Was A Good Show

The talent show went very well yesterday. Everyone was at their best with their singing, comedy, and other acts and I performed Eye is On the Sparrow without messing up the words or letting my vocals get out of control. I think I did well, and I got a lot of applause, but I was unable to get the audience into the performance (as is the nature of the song, unfortunately), and there were other singers later in the show who were able to get audience participation (and the guy right before me got a lot of audience response as well). The woman who sang right before the last act got a lot of people with her because her song was an up-tempo number & she had a better voice than the original artist, but the last act was hilarious. They were the Soggy Bottom Boys and they sang "In the Jailhouse" with the worst yodeler ever...but he was so bad you couldn't help but laugh! Overall, I think the show went well, but we're still a good ways off from the goal of $3,000 raised from the show. Last I heard we had raised $500.

While I may not win the show (not by a long shot), I did manage to get an offer to do a duet for the show next year if they do another one. It would be with the guy who took photos in the audience & the song would be Ain't No Mountain High Enough. That would be fun & I'd do it even if I'm not working here next year (which is likely, considering that there's a hiring freeze in place and I'm an intern in need of a full-time position [and this position should be held by a student who deserves to be here rather than someone who's graduated and not moved on]).

Well, duty calls & I must accept the charges :-)

Damnit, I'm tired

Tomorrow is my birthday. It will be officially the first day of the last year that I can declare myself to be in my late 20s. I won't be like other people (t.v. people, mostly) who pretend to be young when they're not; I'll embrace 30 when the time comes. I'll have to; I teased my older brother when he turned 30 last year, so I'll expect the sentiment to be returned in kind. I just wish I weren't so tired all the time.

I've developed some very odd insomnia where I can't get to bed before 4 a.m. most nights of the week. Something always happens where I'm up too late, whether it's because I'm not feeling well, getting caught up in a book or computer game that I had no business starting, or because I'm doing the household chores and finances. I end up waking up at the precise moment I should be on the road to work and spend the rest of the day trying not to pass out. What's more, I'm trying to lose as much weight in a month as possible so that I can get on a new rollercoaster on opening weekend of Cedar Point [The money for the ride is going to the Fireside Red Cross, so I'm just hoping that I don't go all the way up to Sandusky for nothing], and proper sleep is needed for a better shot at losing weight.

It's not just the lack of sleep, it's the stress of doing a talent show in front of my company on Tuesday (which has me freaking out), and needing to look for a job that is full-time and will pay well. And after that two-day scare where I was a complete danger to myself after doing the taxes, I'm doing what I can to stem the outflow of money so that we may be able to save and do the things we want to do this summer.

Since I'm way behind on a project I'm working on here, I'm going to go back to it. At least this post has done one thing; helped me to feel a little less upset about everything.

Money...and stress

I had originally planned on posting in this blog a missive on the current state of my finances, but I ended up moving the whole damn thing to ebloggy. I fell asleep around 6 a.m. and I have too many things to do...and bills are piling up. It's bad enough that we owe the equivalent of 2/3 of a paycheck in taxes, but our cable/internet/phone may have been cut off because we owe Time Warner as well. I've got to stay late for a charity event meeting, stop off at the library, make dinner before I run off to the Historical society to train for 2 hours for a volunteer effort that I'm doing on Friday afternoon, and then I've got to get home and work on cleaning the house before I can even think about getting some sleep.

I don't even have time to exercise. This situation is exacerbating my depression and has led me to be concerned that I'm going to end up doing something terrible if I don't just ruin my health and run myself into the ground.

Daffodil Update

Instead of just updating my previous post, I'm just going to add the images of the daffodils in a separate post because it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm very tired.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Daffodils

The groundskeepers at my company decided (after suggestions from workers here) to cut the daffodils that are growing around campus because of the impending cold snap and make them available for people to take for "personal use", whatever that means. They're pale yellow [my favorite color & one of my wedding colors] and I have about half a dozen of them in a cafeteria cup on my desk. I'll upload pictures if a)I remember to and b)I have time. They smell really nice & it's a little something to brighten up my desk, especially since I'm in a cubicle in the room with only one set of windows in the front and I'm all the way in the back.

I took some daffodils for a secondary reason: a reminder of a fund-raiser I once headed for the American Cancer Society. I was in charge of the Daffodil Days project for my office, where I was in charge of selling, ordering, and delivering daffodils to individuals and corporations in the Franklin County area. My goal (as they are want to set these things) was to raise $15,000, and I managed to sell over $13,000 despite not having a committee to assist me & only having myself, my husband, and a Godsend volunteer who came in off the street to do the bulk of the deliveries. That, and having Battelle order more than 50% of the flowers didn't hurt, either. I only got to head the project in 2004 (I left at the end of that summer to start grad school), but it was my crowning achievement in an otherwise lackluster career as an administrative assistant for three years. It's one of the few things I missed from that job (there were a few co-workers, but not many that I got along with), but I wouldn't go back to it. For one thing, it's not possible; the Ohio Division of the ACS reorganized to be a handful of larger offices instead of the 17 units that were in place when I was still in their employ and so my job doesn't really exist anymore. Also, I wouldn't be too thrilled to go back to a job that only requires a high school diploma when I hold a Masters degree and want to get started on a PhD as quickly as possible.

Wow, that was a tangent! Anyway, I'm luxuriating in the ardor of spring via my flowers, so I shall end this and get back to work!