Sam hasn’t mentioned this, but he had a crappy day yesterday.
Okay, it didn’t start off so badly. He had an interview at Kinko’s that really went fairly well. He’s supposed to have a second interview next week. No, it isn’t the job he’d prefer, but it would be work—and he’d be eligible for health insurance after 90 days. Even better, they offer benefits to domestic partners. I’d be eligible. I haven’t had health insurance in several years, and I’d actually be able to have coverage without Katie losing eligibility for Peachcare (which is far better coverage than any she could have anywhere else).
However, he was going to get tires put on the car afterward and someone hit him. And he was ticketed. I’m hoping he’ll fight the ticket. He wasn’t hurt and the car is driveable, although it’s ugly and the doors on the passenger side are more difficult to close now.
To make matters worse, we learned that our auto insurance wasn’t in effect! Apparently, the carrier decided that something was hinky because my name didn’t match my driver’s license (though we’d TOLD THEM THAT and explained it!) and despite having been given our new address and phone numbers back in May, they claimed they “couldn’t find us”‐ so they dropped us! Not happy news. Not at all. Getting coverage again took a great big chunk of money and now we’re with a more expensive carrier and altogether, this was just BAD.
NTB seemed rather expensive anyway (after all that!), so he came on home. We checked around and decided that Sam’s Club would be the better choice for the tires.
I certainly didn’t think I’d be getting my hair cut & colored this week after that. We were waiting ’til we could afford it, and I’ve been sorely tempted to start hacking at my bangs, at least, myself. Sam made me promise that I wouldn’t do that, though. And today, he dropped me off at 3-13 Salon.
I was rather nervous as I was being given the tour (yes, formal tour, de rigeur for all first-time customers). The place looks like a Hot Topic fashion show is in progress. Everybody who works there is young and very goth, all tattooed and pierced and stylish. Black seems to be the uniform color, although there’s not a uniform per se. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different kinds of hairstyles and colors in a month, less alone in a few hours. And I mean on real people, not in pictures. The music was a bit loud for my tastes, but that isn’t unusual. And the place is BIG!
They do the paraffin thing on your hands no matter what you’re there for, apparently—it’s just SOP. They had a smock that fit even my great big body with no gaping. The colorist got my hair color right, and the gray is covered up more than I ever remember it being before (it had gotten really obvious to me recently). The stylist cut my hair a bit shorter than it’s been in a while, but I like it and it should be easy to care for. They do a free make-up “touch up” if you’ve had your hair styled, too—that was new to me. I guess it’s a way of encouraging you to come back and really have your make-up done, and I have to say that I’d do so if I had the money. (I’ve been putting on my makeup pretty much the same way for 20 years or so now, just out of habit.)
They do birthday parties. I think that’s neat, and I know G would absolutely love it. I’m not sure as to whether or not shadowkatt would be interested, but I’ll tell her about it.
Sam won’t let me know how much it all cost, though. He made that appointment and handled tips and everything. That worries me a bit. They have 5 or 6 different price levels, and the colorist and stylist I had were at the mid-range level. The colorist had been there 7 years, the stylist 6. I have to wonder how long their top people have been there. I’m afraid to even think about how much they most cost! But the guys I saw (Rico and Jason) were wonderful, so I’m quite happy with them. I feel very thoroughly pampered.
I learned while at the salon that there was a DMV office about a block away, so we went there next. As I posted earlier, I finally got my name changed (as I’ve been trying to do since 1996!) on my license. You better believe we’re faxing a copy of the new license to the insurance agent in the morning to make sure there aren’t any more problems because of that.
Sam and I were going to game tonight since we didn’t get to do so last night. (We’ve settled on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule for the home game, which was necessary so that he’d get to have some peace from me bugging him.) He got two new tires put on the car today while I was getting pampered, and wanted to decompress a bit by playing Spy Hunter and checking his email before we got started—totally understandable.
Unfortunately, around 7:30 pm the supervisor for the data entry job called and asked if I could do a batch of work—tonight. There wasn’t any more work available on Tuesday when Sam took stuff back to her, but apparently, she just had some delivered. And the company committed to a 24-hour turnaround. And everybody else she just hired (17 new people) had said they couldn’t do it tonight. So Sam, being the incredibly wonderful man he is, went out to pick up the work, and I started entering it as soon as he returned.
It’s an entire school’s fundraiser forms. I got up to the Ms, but then the system went down for its nightly maintenance. So now I’m killing time until I can log back in (hopefully shortly after midnight). Sam went to bed, of course—it would be silly to expect him to sit up with me! He always wakes up by 6 am or so, though, so he’s going to take the stuff to the gal who is supposed to do the verification when he gets up. It has to be verified and then back to the company by 10 or 11 am. I do hope this kind of sudden stuff isn’t normal!
I’m afraid the data entry thing isn’t going to work out, honestly. I’ve had horrible muscle spasms since I did the first big mess of it this weekend, and I was just starting to recover when I got the call today.
I’m spasming much more again. I hope I can manage to get through the batch I have to finish tonight, but then I fear that I’m going to have to take one of my hoarded muscle relaxants. Things are better when I can spread out the strain, but this kind of deadline doesn’t allow that. We need the income, though, so I feel guilty to even think about quitting it already. Okay, we can obviously survive without it. But I feel much better to be working and contributing something to the household. It matters to me. And after such an expensive car day, I really want to be able to work. I thought I’d be doing something else by now, but that hasn’t worked out. (sigh)
So you’ve been subjected to this ridiculously long entry because of the nightly server maintenance. Believe it or not, I cut one important subject out of this entirely, to put it in a separate post. Aren’t you lucky?
