Blah blah blah

No word yet from NPR, folks who are waiting to find out. They're probably not interested in me, and that's cool. I hope to at least chat with one of them soon to ask how I could make myself more marketable when applying to them in the future.

I also haven't applied to any other jobs since then. I put all my eggs in that one basket, which isn't that bad. I still check the job posting sites, but haven't found much I like. Thankfully I don't hate my job right now, it's just that I'm not challenged here any more.

In all reality I just wish things were like they were - back when my only real concern was whether I'd be able to schedule all my upcoming travel around my improv shows.

Part of me wants to leave journalism all together because I don't feel like I'm cut out for it, and then part of me screams, "No way - that's what you're actually good at!"

Part of me wants to take a month off to go volunteer at a disaster relief site somewhere in the US, be it flood relief in upstate NY or hurricane relief in Florida or on the Gulf Coast.

All of me isn't so sure what to do next.

I sit at my desk each day and still do my work, but it's hard to remain motivated when my editor lives and works in California and the president here stays hands off. Actually, I'm glad he remains hands off for the most part because he just bothers me.

But this is what it's become. Not like we ever really had a high-pressure newsroom here with people running around and printers going crazy and phones ringing off the hook, but at least there were people to interact with in person on an every-other-day basis (my last editor worked from home two days/week).

Sometimes I think it'd be nice to write a book. Today during my lunch-time walk I thought about a good book idea, a morph of one Amy the Super Smart Wife came up with - Volunteer For A Year. Basically the book follows me as I volunteer full-time for a new non-profit every month for a year. I can already think of several non-profits that'd be awesome for this.

Amy's original idea was to poll my boss about putting me on the Gulf Coast for a month or two to both work for a non-profit disaster response place part-time and to send DNN several stories a week part-time. I doubt he'd go for it and I worry that if I suggested it, he'd think me ready to leave and boot me out the door before I could resign when I was ready.

So, blah - hence the title of this post.

In other news, Spring better gets its ass here in Baltimore and soon. It tricked us with several days of nice warm weather and some green came out on the trees and bushes. And then it snowed last Friday and has hardly gotten out of the 40s this week.

Our Easter was really fun - we had some friends over for waffles and fruit and cookies and whatever else we could bring forth from our tiny kitchen.

In car-related news, more sadness for my Saturn. No, not rats this time. This time it succumbed to the punk ass kids that live in our neighborhood. Again, my poor little car stayed true to its nickname of "Lucky" - given to it years ago precisely because it's not lucky. For years people have backed into it from all sides and left the scene. I can't roll down the driver's side window due to one of those butt-munches. It's also been keyed by other young punks in Boston. Rats have eaten its electrical wires.

And this week young punk ass kids added a dent to its hood. One of those "I'm going to jump on your hood with my butt and leave a big butt dent in your hood" dents. This has happened to my neighbors, too, which sucks. I managed to pound most of the dent out with a mallet, but it's still warped a little and I can see the remaining dents. I called the cops to at least report it, but I know nothing will ever come of that. Such is life for my Saturn.

And it's not like all our neighbors are jerks, just the kids for the most part. Our retired next-door neighbor Ron is super nice and regularly mows our lawn for us. Our other next-door neighbor Mary Jo feeds our fat cat Tuesday when we're out of town. She even invited us to go karaoke with her and some friends the other day.

So the obvious answer is to beat up every kid in our neighborhood. Okay, not really. While a good ass-kicking might help straighten out many of the neighborhood punks, Amy strongly disagrees and reminds me that violence isn't the answer. Blah blah Christian values blah blah. Thanks, Amy. If I wanted to hear about Christianity non-stop, I would've married a pastor.

Oh, wait.

I'm kidding. Amy is correct and smart - as usual. The kids don't need an ass-kicking - they'd most likely benefit from parents who actually cared about them and watched them, as well as from a local community center that would give them something to do rather than staying out late at night vandalizing everything bolted down or too heavy to lift.

Anyway - hope all you fine folks are doing well. I hope this update doesn't make me sound angry or sad or depressed. I'm actually in good spirits the majority of the time. I'm happy making all my plants grow, and planting new flowers, and watching my big fat cat roll around and leave hair on our carpet, and planning a camping trip for Memorial Day weekend, and reading more books, and teaching an improv class, and other neato stuff.