A major milestone.

No first apartment is complete without a terrifying bug experience. It's sort of a rite of passage. So, now that I've had one, I feel like I've finally moved in.

I was watching some quality television on Tuesday night when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something hideous walking up my wall. It wasn't a cockroach or a waterbug - which is good, because if it had been I would have just curled up and cried while it took over my house. But it was still a monster. It had a million legs and antennae and scurried up the wall like a mutant creature of death. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the fucking thing. Killing large insects is the job of dads* and boyfriends,** and I had neither.

After staring in horror for a few minutes, I looked around for something that would allow me to kill the zombie menace without coming within four feet of it. Finally overcoming my crippling fear of what could happen if this thing sprouted fangs and became airborn ... I grabbed the Swiffer and put it out of its hideous misery.

I haven't seen anything else creeping around the apartment, so I'm assuming this invasion was a one-time thing. If it ever happens again, I'm sealing the doors and windows and buying a shotgun.

* I once called my dad at work in the middle of the day and made him come home to kill a crippled bumblebee. I am not at all kidding about this.
** Then again, my boyfriend in college was afraid of spiders. He was also afraid of birds and cats. So maybe just dads.

Have a little faith, people.

My dad read my previous post and actually thought I was going to sign up for an online get-rich-quick scheme.

Everyone needs to leave me alone.

I wish there was a chance that this wasn't a scam.

I came across this article today and actually found myself wishing that it was not a huge lie. I don't usually give sketchy money-earning schemes more than a fleeting glance ... but I'm going to be broke really soon. So this one got something closer to a longing glance of remorse and shattered dreams.

Wouldn't it be awesome if this wasn't a horrible scam? What if I could actually sit in my house in my underwear and make a couple hundred bucks a day? And what if doing so wouldn't cause Bernie Madoff and Enron and Charles Ponzi to show up at my door with rubber bludgeons and bottles of shame to punish my broke ass for pathetically falling for such a hideous pyramid scheme of falsehood?

In any case, I need to find a way to make more money in a legitimate fashion. So that shit like this doesn't actually appeal to me.

Goddammit, world.

Ok. So I know I'm coming off a week or two of bitterness and hatred toward pretty much everyone and everything out there. And I know that thinking happy thoughts and doing happy things is way better than sitting in my house telling the vacuum of the interwebs how much I hate everything. So, let me preface this by saying that I have spent the vast majority of the past week actually interacting with people, enjoying myself, and not being a jaded shut-in.

But there are just two last things that I need to share with everyone.

First, there's this:



This is what my Facebook ads look like. Really, Facebook? Do you need to be so obvious? And why would I want to meet a single dad?

Second, there's the letter I just got from Bank of America. This is what it says:

Dear SALLY RINEHART:

Thank you for banking with Bank of America. We want you to know that due to the number of times you withdrew or transferred money from your Bank of America Regular Savings, we are converting your savings account to a checking account. Federal regulations and our deposit agreement limit the number of withdrawals and transfers a customer can make to a total of 6 during each monthly statement cycle from a Regular Savings by preauthorized or automatic transfers or telephone instruction. Our records show that you exceeded the limit more than 3 times in the past 12 monthly statement cycles.

And so on.

Basically, Bank of America thinks I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to use a bank and Facebook thinks that I'm a single loser. What the fuck, everyone?

What the fuck?

So maybe I spoke too soon. As in, maybe I shouldn't have assumed that my ability to get a job also applied to my ability to hold down a job. Because today, halfway through my second day as a studio assistant, I got fired.

Let me preface this by saying that, since I was in the middle of working two jobs, getting fired from one isn't the total end of the world. And, since I totally forgot to cancel the job interview that I had scheduled prior to signing onto the job that just blew up in my face, I've still got another potential freelance gig in the near future (apparently if you make enough mistakes, they cancel each other out and you're left in a relatively neutral situation). Still, it totally sucks.

So here's an abridged version of the story: I screwed up one thing. My boss decided that I didn't inherently possess the perfectionism that she sought in an assistant. She explained that she didn't have the time to train people, and therefore needed to hire someone who already knew how to do everything perfectly. Many apologies and regrets followed, because she thought I was awesome and great and smart and loved having me around. End of story.*

Aside from the fact that getting fired sucked, I still have my other job and I'm fairly confident that I won't lose that gig anytime soon. And hopefully the interview on Monday will go well. But let this be a lesson to everyone out there: you can apparently get spontaneously fired by someone who likes you. Go figure.

*The irony of this spiel is that it's the exact same explanation I got from the guy who broke up with me last week. Apparently there is a whole world of people out there who feel no sense of cognitive dissonance when saying something like "I think you're amazing and perfect, but logistically we are incompatible." Is it really possible to be so left-brain dominant? Are feelings irrelevant? Whatever happened to subjectivity and emotions and all those things that make us people instead of robots? I don't understand. Anyway, I'm thoroughly unsatisfied with the pitiful state of humanity.