End-of-semester recap.

Ok. Big apologies to my hundreds of loyal readers (hi, Mom!) for the major hiatus in blogging. Apparently when tornadoes of disaster prance across my daily life, it's more effective to address them than to blog about them. But, now that my semester is over and I can take 30 seconds to breathe, here's what's been up since the last time I complained to the interwebz:

1) I got fired again.

I actually prefer to refer to this episode as being laid off. Basically, my boss decided that he didn't want to budget for a designer anymore and sent all my work to some randos in Nepal instead. It totally sucked, but at least I got a severance check.

I've been looking around for a new gig (it's more constructive than sitting in my house and trying to figure out why I can't hold down a fucking job), and so far I've had a couple interviews and a handful of leads. So we'll see where that goes. Every once and a while I freelance for an undergrad professor at Pratt who runs a branding design studio out of his cat-filled apartment ... but that's not exactly a pay-my-rent sort of arrangement.

2) My apartment is for sale.

This one sort of came out of nowhere. Basically, whoever it is who owns our apartment (I know nothing about him aside from the fact that his name is Steve) decided that he wants to put it on the market in hopes of selling it by the time our lease runs out in August. This mystery man has claimed that he'll allow us to renew our lease in the event that the apartment doesn't sell by August ... but he refuses to put this anywhere in writing or make any sort of legitimate agreement. He also only communicates via text message and is usually an enormous douchebag. So that totally sucks.

But aside from the fact that we're dealing with a loser text-sender (what professional adult does that?) who might boot us out in a few months but might decide not to and isn't going to let us know in advance either way ... there's also the incredible annoyance of having brokers show the apartment to potential buyers. This is where the situation gets tricky.

If we can create an undesirable domestic environment for potential buyers, we have a better chance of keeping our apartment. But if the powers that be catch on to our attempts to sabotage them, they'll refuse to renew our lease regardless of whether the apartment actually sells. So we're walking a fine line, but so far no one has seemed that interested in buying the place. So maybe it's working.

3) I finished my first year of grad school.

This item doesn't really belong on a bitch list, but it's worth noting.