Good News!

My, my, my. Things are finally looking up, thank God.

I got a call today for work from my crazy temp lady, which led to me spending the day uptown...and in case you care, I never want to hear a human voice again as long as I live, or make a phone call. As should be obvious, I spent from 10:45 am until 5:00 pm on the damn phone, which is the kind of work I hate, hate, hate. On the other hand, anyone who thinks I was going to turn down work of any kind whatsoever is nuts.

And as I was walking toward the building for today's job, my phone rang, and lo and behold, it was a very interesting call from Kelly Services, one of the big agencies. I had answered an email from The Actors' Fund about an event job for Kelly, and had sent them my resume, and they were interested not only in me doing the event thing for a 6 day week, but in the other stuff on my resume for lots of nice (well paying) temp jobs! So I'm going to see them next week!

Even better, my current straight temp agency actually PAID me for this past week's work (the week in that almost empty office). God knows I haven't got a lot left (what with prescriptions and whatnot), but enough to get me through the week at least. I'll worry about next week next week.

And I have various observations...after all, I left the house recently to do more than get the papers at the deli and walk two blocks to the cheap place to buy cigarettes and cat food. Quite the world traveler. So...

Today I saw a wonderful truck. It was a rather tattered white pickup truck, and on the driver's side door it said "NYC Department of Mental Protection." Well, I was charmed by this. Can't you just see this battleworn pickup cruising through the streets of New York, picking up all the random crazies, stowing them in the back of the pickup and taking them to some nice place of refuge? No? Me either. Turns out, of course, when I looked more closely, that some wit had simply scraped off the "enviro" piece in front of "mental." I liked my idea better.

Then tonight I was doing a double crostic, which is a form of mental acrobatics I highly recommend to any crossword puzzle person out there. Double crostics are a form of crossword puzzle with a second layer. In order to solve the puzzle, you must first solve a quote. The clues are at the bottom, each one lettered and numbered - i.e., "Q32." Going down the list, the first letters of the answers supply the name and title of the book or whatever, and the words in the actual puzzle are a quotation. They have them every other week in the NYTimes, and they're enormous fun if you are a word and book freak like me. Did you know, by the way, that researchers have figured out that doing crossword puzzles and other mental acrobatics tends to stave off Alzheimer's? Now I'm even more of a fanatic about them. (Parenthetically, I've decided to be a researcher when I grow up. They do all kinds of neat studies that take them two or three years to complete, during which time they get paid large salaries. One study I saw discovered that more gay men between the ages of 21 and 35 commit suicide if they have AIDS than those men of the same age who don't have AIDS. This was a five year study. Um...it took them five years to figure this one out? And they got paid in six figures for each of those years? See why I want to be a researcher?)

In tonight's puzzle (no, I didn't get the Times this early, I have a book of them), one of the answers was Hottentots, which immediately brought one of my favorite movies to mind - should you not have ever seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, you must immediately rent it. It's the story of a tribesman of a VERY remote tribe who finds a Coke bottle, and what he does about it. It's hilarious. SEE IT!

And, while I'm still wandering around in my puzzle, I was...well, puzzled...by a definition, even though I know it's correct. A manta ray turns out to be a devilfish. I know that mantas are called devilfish, but I'm damned if I can figure out why. How do you get the notion of a devil (or the devil) out of something that looks basically like a batwinged cape? I could see calling it a Draculafish (well, you know, the cape thing), maybe, but a devilfish? Not red, not horned, not cloven hoofed...why devilfish?

I am still doggedly submitting myself for background work in movies, but absolutely nothing is happening on that front. I went to the open call at one of the biggest background casting agencies, and made a terrible mistake the night before. I decided to set my hair.

Have you ANY idea how long it's been since I actually, in cold blood, took out the rollers and pin curl clamps and SET MY HAIR? Can we discuss 1965? And what's worse, I WASHED it and set it.

I really should have thought to aim my camera phone at my head and take a picture of the ensuing disaster. What we had here, ladies and gentlemen, was one huge, enormous, fluffy, looming...POUF. No, that's not quite right. What it was was a...POOUUUFFF. Pouffity, pouffity, pouf, pouf, pouf. A fandango of POUF. Stick finger in light socket POUF. Miles of it. Thank God for water, a comb, and a decent hair clip (although the raging pouf kept trying to escape...did I mention the humidity last Wednesday?). Pouf. Pouf. Pouf. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Never again.

Next I'm going to try to learn how to blow dry. I have a ghastly suspicion that this won't work either without bear grease or perhaps lard. Let us pray. Above all, let us not pouf. Deliver us from pouf.

Love, Wendy