Saturday, October 21, 2006

evening

..And Don’t Call Me Shirley - Call Me Shirleen

Are you prepared to enter the crazy place I call a brain?  I’m going to try to transcribe in a linear manner, my wacky dreams from yesterday morning.  My guesses about the appearances of everyone and everything will be in italics.

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This dream started with me doing loans, but seemingly in the back of some expensive red sports car.  Oh geez, I just realized, it could be a red Ferrari.  (Tie Domi drives a red Ferrari) Anyway, in the back of the above-mentioned sports car, I was talking to a guy on the phone.  Apparently I’d applied for a job with him, but he was being a huge jerk and he said that he couldn’t do a home equity loan with the info that I gave him.  He acted like it was the most ridiculous request he’d ever heard. (Leigh-Ann has been talking to a couple of guys about working for them doing loans, and marketing them online.  A friend told me that she and her partner wanted a home equity line of credit to put another bathroom in their house.  Plus, there’s been lots of applying for jobs in our household this week) Appropos of nothing, I was in some really great looking mansion that looked like the house from “Rock Star”.  I specifically remember the floors being really nice and looking like the fancy laminate Saltillo tiles we want to replace our hideous linoleum in our kitchen and family room downstairs.  I have absolutely no idea what I was doing there, but apparently I was sharing the house with Barbra Streisand (she’s been in concert...and in the news for telling a heckler to “shut the fuck up”), who showed up at the house with like a dozen little dogs on leashes.  I’ve never particularly liked Barbra Streisand, and I doubt I’d like her in real life.  However, in my dream, she was super nice and I think we talked about dogs.

The next part of the dream is the part that went on the longest.  I don’t really think most of it needs explanation.  I dreamt that Leanne (the one without quotes; i.e., the real one) posted something mean about me on her blog.  I don’t remember what it was, but I remember thinking that it wasn’t fair.  So, I decided to go see her since she wouldn’t talk directly to me.  I don’t know what country we were in, but I do know that we’re 3000 miles or so apart, but perhaps I teleported, like Hiro on “Heroes”.  Anyway, I thought she was working at a bookstore, so I went to what vaguely resembled a mall to me.  I went up an escalator and there was a really large area at the top of the escalator with lots of people wandering around.  For some reason, there was a really cool (why it was cool, I have no idea) stamp machine against one wall.  I wish I’d looked at it, so I could’ve figured out what country I was in.  So, I look in what I think is a bookstore and see Leanne.  She seems to know who I am, even though we’ve never met.  I guess if I can teleport to the mall, she can recognize a stranger.  She doesn’t seem surprised to see me.  The place really is a bookstore, and she’s working there, but as I’ll find out later, she doesn’t work in a bookstore.  I’m not sure how that works.  She looks the same as she does in pictures, but her hair is, uh, puffy.  I’m not sure how to describe it, but maybe when you find out her name in the dream, you’ll understand.

Leanne tells me to come back to her office.  So, we go upstairs to her office, and it’s like what you see normally when you’re behind the scenes of a big department store.  When I was a teenager, I worked at both Robinson’s and The May Co., before they were Robinsons-May, and it looked exactly like the suite of offices either upstairs or behind customer service.  Anyway, we go to her office, and she has me sit down and wait.  There’s a plaque either on her door or on her desk, I don’t remember which, and it says her name is Shirleen (the last name is like Pagnoski or something, but I didn’t write it down, so that part’s lost to me), and that she’s the Executive VP & Travel Coordinator of Skin So Soft.  How those go together, I have no clue.  (my friend, Victor, just got a new job involving corporate travel - we used to work together at United Airlines, so that may play into it) For one, she was just downstairs in a bookstore, for another, Skin So Soft isn’t even a company, it’s a product made by Avon.  I think she’s finally going to talk to me, but then she invites people into her office for a group job interview.  There are four other people, I think.  I don’t even know what the job is, but I’m supposed to act like I’m interviewing too.  The four of them are sitting in front of her desk, and I’m to the side, on the same wall, but on the other side of the door from them.  (I did have a job interview of sorts on Monday & Tuesday, but it was on the phone, and the person I talked to was definitely not Shirleen) Uh, Shirleen is asking some average job interview questions of everyone, including me, which freaks me out a bit.  I hate job interviews under the best of circumstances, but this is too weird.  I don’t want whatever job it is and I don’t want to be in a room with her and four strangers.  The dream ends with Shirleen showing us a beer commercial with animated animals and cavemen, then asking us our opinion about the commercial.  I say, “Animated animals sell a lot of beer?” That’s when I woke up.  Not only do I not know what went on with “Shirleen” (I have never, in my life, seen that name before - what the hell does it mean?) in real life, it’s even frustrating in my dreams.  I can’t believe I figured out how to teleport for that.  If I’m asked about a commercial someday, I hope I can come up with something better than “Animated animals sell a lot of beer?” I’ve embarrassed myself in a dream.

The next two dreams are short.  In the first one, it started with me entering a strange house.  It was like going up a plank.  When I got into the house, there were a few people milling about.  One of them was Geena Davis.  Why?  No idea.  There was also a smarmy car salesman who was mad about being stuck in the house because he had cars to sell or something.  The guy was a guy from my mortgage agent class, but that guy doesn’t sell cars...and I liked him.  He wasn’t smarmy at all, he was nice.  Then, they told us that we had to campaign for a Republican.  A Republican who had pointed at some guy on a cruise and said, “He’s gay!”.  Heh, Republicans are getting such bad publicity, they’re doing stupid things in my dreams too.  Anyway, there’s no way I wanted to do that.  I decided to stick with Geena, as I figured she’d know what to do.  That’s how the dream ended.  I have no idea what it meant, except that our mortgage agent instructor told us that she’d been cast in a reality show.  Because of her contract, she couldn’t tell us which show.  One of the few personal things we knew about her was that she loves to travel, so maybe us thinking that she wouldn’t be on Big Brother is why something like Big Brother was in my dream.  I don’t even watch the show.

The third dream was just about feeding foster kittens.  We had so many kittens and they were so many ages that I couldn’t remember who got bottles and who got solid food.  They were all over the place, inside and outside, and in trees.  That’s all there was to that dream.  But, we do have foster kittens, but there are only three of them.  They’re not outside, ever.  Perhaps it was just one of those “everything is out of control” dreams.  It’s been a crazy week, so that makes sense.

Friday, October 20, 2006

early evening

Omigawd, I So Need Sleep

We’ve been going to bed at approximately 4am every day this week.  Lots of stuff has gotten done, but I just feel terrible.  My whole body hurts and I’m having the weirdest dreams that seem to be a mashup of my life, current events, fears, wishful thinking (I was living in a house that looked like the Rock Star mansion, yo), with a special guest starring appearance by Geena Davis.  Why, I say?  Why Geena?  She hasn’t even been in the news lately.  I get the Barbra Streisand appearance, but she’s been in concert.  I’ll write up the dreams tomorrow.  I woke up to write one down, it was so lengthy and strange.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

early afternoon

Idiot of the Day - Jeffrey Lundgren, Mass Murderer, Fat Guy

Oh, boo hoo, poor fat Jeffrey says he’s too obese to die by lethal injection.  He killed “Dennis and Cheryl Avery, and their three daughters, ages 7 to 13, on April 17, 1989” - they were part of his wacky religious cult and apparently they just weren’t devout enough for him, so he shot them all to death.

Moreover, Lundgren’s lawyer claims that he suffers from medical conditions that would interfere with the effectiveness of the lethal cocktail and exacerbate his suffering. I’m sorry, why is it that I care whether or not he suffers a little extra?  This isn’t one of those cases where there’s any doubt he’s guilty.  Hey, I know, how about we use his obesity in his favor and let him die by hanging.  His weight will be a big bonus and assure him of a quicker death.  Although, if I had my druthers, he’d be tortured.  Maybe a little Bush Administration approved interrogation technique gone awry.  Anyway, why waste time with this case?  Someone pull out a gun, pop him in one in the head, then we won’t have to worry about the poor poor suffering he might endure with his lethal injection.

Yes, I admit it, I’m one of those weird liberals who is in favor of the death penalty.  I’m not always in favor of it, I know that mistakes have been made, and I believe that some people with death sentences should be allowed to live; for instance, Karla Faye Tucker and Tookie Williams, but apparently no one ever follows “Flippy’s Common Sense Rules for the Death Penalty”.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

late evening

From Our Adopted Genius Child In The Philippines

While other people adopt infants (see:  Madonna; Malawi), we decided to adopt an older child.  One in her twenties.  One who already showed incredible intellect and talent. Why adopt a helpless infant, when you can adopt a potty-trained foreign child who has a larger vocabulary than yourself, and who is close to an age where she can support you in your senior years?  Like within the next five years.  Also, adopting a child who already has a mother is significantly easier on the bank account than a child who needs things, like food ‘n shelter ‘n stuff.  Then again, if we were raising her here, no one would’ve stolen the neighborhood phone cables and we wouldn’t have had trouble reaching her for weeks while the phone company hooked up the neighborhood service (and DSL - ack, she had no internet at home, tragic!)...and switched all the houses, so they were getting each other’s phone calls.  I think that should be a fairly simple color-coded thing.  In the US, we’re not very good at electing qualified politicians these days, but we have so mastered our colors.

Anyway, this was our latest email from Celine, our wonderchild: 


From: Celine
Date: 10/18/06 10:27:26
To: Leigh-Ann (& Nancy)
Subject: phone

Hello Dearest Oddmother,

My real phone number is back, but I’m seriously thinking of switching
phone companies soon.  Will let you know when I get that sorted out.

Also, I am the real Leanne Domi.

With Love,
Leanne Domi

I don’t know why we didn’t think to ask her in the first place.  An oversight on our part, clearly.

early evening

Today, I Got A J-O-B - No Wait, I Got Two J-O-B-S

It’s been a crazy week.  Yesterday.  Wait, was it only yesterday?  Yesterday, I got a call from a job I applied for on August 30th.  It was a job I wanted so much that I spent all of the 29th, when TwoNz sent me the ad, redoing my resume.  I’ve been self-employed since 2000, doing internet affiliate marketing and search engine optimization with Leigh-Ann, so I didn’t need a resume.  However, months ago, Leigh-Ann and I decided to dip our toes into the water and see what it was like working with other people.  Yeah, actual real live people.  So, I applied for a job that, in short, is reading blogs.  I’ll be reading blogs in specific categories (alas, not blogs about tv shows or fantasy football) and asking bloggers with good content if they would like to sign contracts and be paid royalties to share their content with others.  Kind of like syndicating newspaper columns.  It’s a commission only job, so I need to be prepared to work for my money, instead of us getting good search engine rankings and watching the sales happen all by themselves.  Leigh-Ann is applying for the job too - we’re similarly, yet differently qualified.  We have really varied interests and between the two of us, we either know a little (or a lot) about a topic, or we’re able to find out about it online.  We work really well together.  Not a single work fight (not other ones either, but the work ones are important to those who want to do business with us) in our years together, which will be nine years next month.  And, we have lots of good ideas together.  We need a venture capital person who wants constant ideas, but without hassling us about the nitpicky details of a business plan.  We want other people to implement our ideas.  We have this fantastic idea for a website for career ideas for teenagers.  I digress, I signed a employment contract and a non-disclosure agreement today.  For a j-o-b.

While I was working out the details of the new job yesterday, Leigh-Ann was talking to a mortgage broker about a job for her.  Well, for both of us.  Two mortgage brokers need internet marketing help, we need the help of experienced loan people.  We’re a lovely blend of experience, the four of us.  So, we’ll soon be ready to do loans in all 50 states, online.  Yes, that’s right, we can get you a loan for a new home, refinance your current home, or get you a home equity loan, and you don’t even have to leave your computer.  You don’t have to make appointments to see us (unless you’re interested in coming to Vegas to meet us for lunch), you don’t have to drive anywhere, all you need to do is fill out the application online, fax or mail tax/financial info, talk to us by email (by phone if absolutely necessary, but it probably isn’t), and you don’t have to even leave your house to get the loan done until you sign the final documents at the title company.  We’ll be just that convenient.  And our partners, they have access to all kinds of loans - for good credit, for bad credit (we learned in mortgage agent class that you can get a home loan one day out of bankruptcy), for medium credit.  Whatever you’ve got, you’re almost sure to qualify for something.  Also, for those of you who don’t want people you kind of know in a personal or bloggy sense to see your credit report , we can work the customer service part of the loan, and the guys can do all the poking into your credit report.  You get a loan, we get a commission, no one leaves their home, no one has to look at anyone else’s credit report, and we’re all happy.  You get a new house or you remodel your old one or you pay off some bills, and we get to keep our addiction to buying books from Amazon.  Everybody’s happy.  Plus, we try to make sure it isn’t a tedious process.  Like my first home loan was with our home builder.  Ugh, the woman tried to give me a crappy deal and she was kind of mean too.  We promise to never be mean, even if you’re mean to us.  Perhaps that can be our slogan.  Mean Loan Officers Suck.