So a week and a bit ago I went down to the studio I hope to work for, after hearing that they're looking for storyboard artists. I got the test, got a lot of 'hey, what's up' from old coworkers, and then shit got crazy busy with the convention, Thanksgiving and getting a new roommate.
Did I mention that? I have a new roommate now. Friend from Toronto who's going to be living here for the forseeable future, helping me out with the rent until she can get on her feet and see where she's at.
Anyway, so shit got busy and I only managed to start it over the weekend. I pretty much worked my ass off for three days straight trying to finish it. I hadn't been given a due date, but I wanted to get it done sooner rather than later. Spent all day yesterday, from when I woke up to when I passed out at 1am with my wrist throbbing from the effort, finishing it to send it in. I was so proud.
Then I got an email back today saying that they had already chosen someone.
I'm almost too jaded with my luck to be disappointed, or even surprised. The only thing I really feel is annoyance that I put it all that work and really hurt myself only for it to be for naught. I would rather be told that it sucked, then 'well we liked it, but we've already hired someone'
Still, with my track recored, I practically expected it.
I'm never going to work in animation again, am I.

OH HEY LOOK, UPDATIN'

So the new in my life is this: roommate. I've got one. In my one-bedroom apartment.
She's a girl I know from the Internet, of all places, that I've known for a bit a now. I stayed at her place during the spring for Anime North for some Toronto adventures, and now the tables have turned. Only there's nothing she's up here for, and she's not going back home.
More or less, she needed a place to get away, and I needed a way to save money. So it worked out for the both of us. She moved in on Thursday and we're now looking around to find furniture for her clothes and stuff, and eventually a bed 'cause right now we're sharing. It's working out pretty well so far, though it's only been two days so that's hard to judge. Once she gets a job, we'll see how things go. She's trying to get in with the Shoppe with us, but I don't know if Bossman really wants another young'un in the store. I might be able to convince him for a Christmas season hiring, but I think I will have more luck convincing her to hand out her resume other places.
AND THAT'S THE UPDATE. Not much else going on. Trying to do a storyboard test, but maybe I'm rusty from not working for a year, maybe I'm stressed, but every time I start working on it, I only get a bit done before panicking that it's not good and there's no point even trying. I know it's bull and I'm still working but, yeah, it's a problem.

Working on the comic side of the Shoppe, I always see one old coworker a week, it seems. Today came in a guy who's name I can't recall, but I recognized. Still, not recognizing him enough to know his name, I just kept with the usual customer service rhetoric, until he looked at me and asked 'Hey, didn't you used to work for Mercury?' I reply with a 'yep' and he asks why I'm not back there now. I give him a look and tell him that I've been asking them that for months - I'd been emailing them since the winter about work, and they told me to wait until next winter.
He looked confused and then just sorta mumbled 'well, I guess yeah we only have the one show right now'

Oh animation, why can't you just leave me to wallow in my sorrow and dejection.

In other news, I'm going to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs tomorrow. It looks FANTASTIC, so I'm super excited.
And I laughed at Ted's Shellfish joke. I don't know what that means for me :/

YYEEEAUGH my feet hurt. I've been wearing the same shoes for 5 years now and they are nearly non-exsitent by now. But with my strange, square feet I utterly HATE shoe shopping, so I've been putting it off for a while now. But today I tried walking home from the Shoppe, and my feet feel like they've fallen apart. I guess tomorrow I'm going to have to go shoe shopping.
On the Shoppe, they've hired me back, which is yay! Considering the news for animation for the rest of the year isn't entirely optimistic, it's good news for me. I've had to promise to work even once animation starts back up, which'll be interesting but that'll be a bridge to cross when it's come to. I've never been one to think super far ahead.
Otherwise, I'm broke. Dead broke. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to work comissions and try to get some extra money in. Although, it would probably help if I did something like not buy IKEA funiture - I just bought a TV stand yesterday that put me back 200, but now I have an awesome stand, that actually helps my TV look bigger!, and having managed to put it together all by myself, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Managed some tough callouses on my hands, but a good feeling of acomplishment.
OH MAN, ICE CREAM COMMERCIAL, SO HUNGRY RIGHT NOW

I'm still in a bit of an art depression funk, but I'm hoping to pull out of that by the end of the week, when the apartment is schway super clean.

So, I'm still jobhunting.
I had an interview on Thursday, but it was my first, professional interview and I went in blind and fell on my ass. Since all I've been hired for is 'here are my drawings' or 'just give me this min. wage job', interviews have been pretty much show up and I'm hired. But this one was talking about myself, about the company, about a lot of things and I totally blew it. But at least I came away knowing what to expect.
A friend who used to work for the Shoppe but now, coincidentally, works in the building my caf job's in, let me know of some job information his Storyboard Artist friend came across. Turns out, it was just Mercury's hiring information, which I had already noted in July and asked them about, to be told that the 'Start date: Immediately' was wrong and that they intended to hire in the mid winter. But then seeing the job posting posted again last week, again saying 'starting now' made me worried and upset. A friend at the studio told me that as far as he knew, it was still a Feb start date, but I'm still starting to feel more and more burned by the place. This is like an abusive relationship, where I know I'll only get hurt, but I'm still begging to go back.

I've also got a shot at doing charicatures for partys/fairs/whatever else for an entertainment company, but that's hardly steady work. Still, I'm working on cranking some stuff out so I have a decent portfolio to show them by Monday and maybe at least get some side gigs for extra cash.

So I have a joooooob.
It's not a fantastic job. It's a cafeteria job in a bank headquarters, and it'll pay just slightly more than what I'm making on EI right now, but hey, it's a job. It's something steady to plan my day around and keep my feet on the ground. And right now, that's what I really need.
Also got a new couch, along with the new-ish bookshelf, folks bought me a bunch of groceries and I've got the party on Friday. I think things are looking up.

Working at Bluesfest is awesome, but so way tiring. I get home every night at about quarter after midnight, and hit the shower before passing out into bed, so I don't fall asleep smelling like frygrease. We haven't been very busy so far, which is disappointing in a money-making sense, but cool in the 'well, now I'm getting paid to enjoy music' sense. And being on good terms with my manager means I get easier jobs. Or at least, not the ones I request to not have - I more or less begged to not be up there serving. After being able to compare conbusy and Canal busy, I'm far less more enthusiastic about selling things to people who are there to buy it for fun and are in no sort of rush. The whole 'get rid of the line, get rid of the line' sense of urgency does not play well with me. So I'm more or less Greg's assistant, helping out in all various fields were he points me - last night I got to enjoy Sam Roberts while chopping tomatoes and onions.
It was pretty sweet. But the downside is that my sleep schedule's being mucked and I'm starting to wake up tired. Obviously, I'll get used to this just as it ends, but I've got a busy week ahead of me.

Also on the job front: I'm started sending applications everywhere. Bloody everywhere. If animation's not hiring, then dammit I'll find someplace else that well. The PetValu near me is hiring fulltime with good wages. I have crossed my lucky fingers.

I'm getting more and more bored, and at the same time desperate. I've been working on improving my portfolio lately; no word on what exactly the start date for the Kanata job is going to be, and there's a studio closer to where I live (right across the street from the Shoppe!) that's hiring, so I'm going to try and apply there. Hopefully I'll be able to finish everything up and apply by the end of the week. And then, fingers crossed, I'll get the job. And I can stop worrying about this entire mess.
Also, I need to stop watching home design shows. I have no moneeeeey.

What sucks most about no knowing if I have a job or not, is being uncertain about applying for other jobs. I don't want to land a good job, hopefully in a kitchen, start making money, and then find out that I DO have the Kanata Studio job and have to freak out over whether or not I should keep my food work or my animation work.
Could be bad mojo either way.
ARGH this shit's hard.

So OMG OMG OMG. Since the dog that I really loved from my breeder was due sometime in the last week, I decided to check up with her to see if everything went alright, since the website wasn't updated and I know she's had trouble with that. And the puppies were born, and she had pictures up! Lookit their little white paws Unfortunately the mother, Jade, was supposed to have three puppies but one died during the operation. I joke about how insane it is to pay this price for a dog, but when you consider just how genetically fucked up they are and how hard breeding them seems to be, it kinda makes sense.
But lookit the puppies with their little faces and their paws and their eyes aren't open yet and they're so cute and awwwww.
The breeder's other female is due in the next two weeks too, but I'm pretty set on Jade's puppies. Jade is a real sweetie, she's small and she's quiet. Fuck, if I could, I'd adopt her! So I'm hoping her puppies will have the same quality. I don't know if I want the boy or the girl yet, though. I'm leaning towards the boy.

IN OTHER NEWS
I've found out the hard way that I don't have a job at Mercury. IE: everyone else is starting/has started working there except me. I still have the job in Kanata to hope on, and lord am I hoping, but my optimism's worn out and I've started applying a whole bunch other places. The other problem is I'm trying to find a job that'll pay me at least as much as I'm making by doing nothing right now. Afterall, since my only real motive to find work so fast is that I want to be able to financially take care of myself and said new puppy and I'm surviving well enough on EI right now. I know that animation will pay me twice as much, but unless I find a job that's going to pay me 700$ a week it's almost not worth the trouble.
Yaaaay job hunt!

Went down to Kanata today to check out the studio there. I'm 110% wanting to hop on board, even if the schedule isn't set to start until third week of July (although Kyle says they're going to do their best to start earlier) Kyle is a doll, just really friendly, personable and nice. The studio itself is beautiful too, great big space with cubicles that are just huge, twice the workspace than at Mercury. Again, the only real downside is the startdate and the distance, but the distance is such a good excuse for the scooter. I've pretty much associated this job with the scooter now.
Unless things go ary, I'm certain I have this job. I've told Kyle I want it and I'll keep in touch and he seemed please about it. I guess by the end of this month I'll know for sure where I stand: if I got the job out in Kanata, fantastic and I'm working there with all my friends and if not, I still have the option of Merc and know people there still too and that's that.

And then, oh damn, my Boston Terrier books, which I had half bought for the research/preparation and half to make sure my credit card was still working, and when I went out to get them, on the way back there was a Puggle (Pug/Beagle) in the elevator and I go OMG IS THAT A PUGGLE and the dude's like OMG ISN'T HE ADORABLE and we talked dogs for the thirty seconds it took to reach my floor. Then I start reading my Boston Terrier books and UGHSDFKSJDFASDF. It really sucks that I can't afford a dog right now when I want one so badly, but I've got to curb my spending and teach myself self control. But it's haaaaard.

Oh crabsticks, it's 7 already. I should make dinner.

Man, THIS is how a studio should look Collideascope was pretty on the ball with it (we were allowed to paint our offices, us three girls could just never decide on something) but my biggest gripe with Mercury has always been the grey, dull, workmill-like look of the place, doubly so in the new studio. When(if) I get back, I'm colouring up my corner like nobody's bizniss.

I've got the day off due to rainy crappy weather, and I'm torn between staying home and watching movies all day, and heading down to Chapters/Starbucks to read a good book. Either way means leaving the house, since I've no movies downloaded at home and would have to go out to rent them, or even go to spend time in the theater (not that there's anything beyond Coraline I want to pay 10 bucks for) Still, I should be upping my number. And I just bought a bunch of books yesterday, so really, finacially speaking, I should stay home and read one of those. But the Jedi's in heat and I don't know if I can take her noises all day. It is a conumdrum!
And thirdly, my apartments still a bit of a mess. I REALLY should take this time to clean it. If this rain keeps up like this all day, there's a 75% chance I won't be working tomorrow anyway.

Bah, making decisions before coffee is just a bad idea.

Dollhouse: My GOD, Amy Adam's doctor character looks like my little sister. It's disturbing, and a little distracting. The show itself is still a little 2002-lame but I'm going to keep watching.

Work: I WAS SO RIGHT ABOUT FRIDAY. Christshit, we got something like 6 schools come by and were busy for hours of just running around trying to get rid of the line. Then I get asked (told) to work today because around 400 kids were expected to drop by. In comparison the weekend shifts were easy pie, bogged down only by the dread of working today. And working today sucked, the wind was fucking brutal and froze us all down to the bone. Tomorrow's my day off, finally, and I can't wait for the sleeping, shopping and cleaning up my fucking apartment, it's such a mess my god. Then the weather starts to get warmer and who knows how long the canal will stay open and it's back to unemployment for me. But hopefully not for too long. Though I am looking forward to a short stint of just quiet drawing and reading at Chapters.

Oscars: Saw it with Stephris and had some crazy fun. The opening musical number was just HI-larious and we nearly died laughing. Everything was incredibly predictable. And I really hope that the musical movie is making a comeback to more than just one stage adaptation a year. FUCK YEAH MUSICALS.

Last week of Winterlude and I am NOT looking forward to today. Fridays are always the worst, there's usually a number of schools on fieldtrips/days off and we're never prepared or staffed enough. I'm heading in early to get everything ready so that we don't have any troubles, but god I'm not looking forward to serving kids for three to five hours.
Yesterday was perfect. We were a little busy, but never crazy so and more than able to handle any lines we got. Plus due to Obama visiting Harper/the city, we were making special 'Obama Tails', which is just a regular with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. We still have some whipped cream left over, so we'll probably sell some more today. By the end of shift it got TOO slow, pretty much dead due to shitty traffic and weather, but yesterday morning was what I wish every shift would be. I hope today is too.
Then it's the last weekend and I'm possibly out of work! To be fair, I'm looking a little forward to it. This job's fun, but I want to get into my art again, and I'm just not having the time what with being piss tired when I get home. Hoping for a good March!

Finally: Last night I had a terrible, frightening dream that was like a mix of Dollhouse/Dharma (LOST)/and Fallout. My god, I don't think I got any rest last night.

I'm finally healthy again! This past week has been death on me, as for the first time in years I catch the flu. It was terrible, aches and pains and my throat was so swollen I was completely mute and it hurt to do much of anything. I was worried I had strep, for a while there.
On a slight bright/lucky streak, that week also happened to be extremely mild and raining, closing the Canal for all the days I was too sick to work. So I didn't have to feel bad about calling in sick and not making money. I still feel bad about not making money, but that's a different bad feeling alltogether.
So yesterday life returned to normal as I regained health. Work was par-for-course, an 8:30-7:30 shift on a busy Winterlude Sunday. While I'm default server for opening, since I'm in good favours with the managers I'm pretty much not expected to work window on the weekends anyway but the back where I can be total buds and talk and not be stressed out, and since I was unable to speak, they stuck me on cash monitor, which is the most boring job in the shack. I stand there and record all the twenty dollar bills we get in, and re-stock the cash with change when it runs out, which is fairly frequently. It's cold and boring and harder to focus than you'd think. I hope I never have to do that again, I'd much rather work on cooking the tails.

Today's the day off though, so I'm going to be spending it with my sister. She's up for the week from school, and since she's the only one of my friends who's not a weenie, we're going skating. I'm sure my ill-fated attempts to stay upright on the ice will be downright hilarious. Afterwards we're going to see Coraline 3D (sorry friends I initially wanted to see it with; she is my sister, after all) and to my parents for dinner/free laundry. Hurrah!

I managed to do a lot today. I cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom, the lizard's cage and half my bedroom, made some bread, a delicious dinner, tidied up the apartment in general and restocked on groceries. I even managed to not spend half the day online. Go me!
Although I only managed to see one movie today and that's disappointing. I'm far from giving up now, but I may not be able to meet my goal of 500 after all. Still, not going to give up until the last day.

This is the last week before Winterlude, the big winter festival up here on the Canal. Work's going to be busy busy busy and thus so am I. While being a good, productive worker has it's perks, there's also downsides. I'm practically a manager in training, even though I'm not making manager wages, and I'll be working 6 days a week starting next week, with Monday my only day off. Weekends I'm to help open; this means coming in at 8:30, which means leaving at 8am. UGH. On the bright side it's steady hours and at least I know that I'm off every day at the same time. I won't have a lot of personal time for the art unless I sacrifice sleep, but it should do for a month.

And I've rejoined DeviantArt! I hadn't signed on since second year college, way back in 2005, and since my style, confidence and all around artitude has changed I decided to get all that old shit off and start mostly afresh. I haven't uploaded a full bunch yet and it's mostly doodles but ye gods, stuff I drew is finally on the internet, so people can see the bizarro things I draw like Sharkwar propaganda and BtVS cartoon bastardizations:

Wooooo, go me. I still haven't figured out the ins and outs of the whole site yet, or even toed the waters of the forums and chatrooms (I don't image them to be super awesome anyway) but I'm sure once I get better hold of my time I might peek and poke around. I avoided all that stuff before, might be a good idea to check it out this time around. You never know.

On a final note, the Superbowl Watchmen and Transformers trailers were awwwwwwesome.

The Oscar nominations are up and I have seen only a tiny handful of the films. Interesting that RDJ and Heath both got nominated for Best Supporting Actor, even though RDJ's was for Tropic Thunder and not Iron Man.
Wall-E's got a number of noms in there too! I hope it wins screenplay, since that's still the closest an animated feature can get to best picture these days. I'm surprised that Let The Right One In wasn't nominated for foreign, considering the amount of hooplaw it's been getting.
Still, it's the usual predictable plate and I'm going to round up my Oscar movie viewings in order to place my bets for Oscar night.

LOST IS BACK.
I haven't watched the new episodes yet, so don't no one say nothing, but holy hell I'm watching them download and making happy little girl noises. It's taking FOREVER, I think I might've worn out my bandwidth with all the other movie downloading (can I do that?) but holy crap I'd better it downloaded tonight so I can watch and catch up and OMG LOST YAY.

And regardless of when it downloads tonight, I'll probably be able to watch it. The weather's been mostly grody this week, snow and grey skies and not the super best for skaters to want to go out, but even on gorgeous weather Tuesday there was no one out there. Which means that there was no point in me going to work, so I've been staying home and not making money. It kinda sucks :(

Holy shit, I'm exhausted. It's 8:30am and I should really be catching some more zz's, but I had barely eaten or drunk anything last night and came home to pass out in bed, so a nice dehydration headache woke me up. I'm sipping some water now, hoping to feel better for shift #2 today, which starts at 12.
So the day went by quickly and busily. I went to my designated BeaverTail shack and got the 30-second spiel of training on cash and then joined service. It was like a mix between McDonald's cash and working the conventions, so I caught on pretty quick. Worked that for an hour, then Big Boss grabbed me and brought me over to the Civic Center to help that booth out for a few hours. After that shift was done at 4, I walked over to the nearest BeaverTail shack on the canal, as instructed, and worked there a few hours, before I was brought back over to my first shack and finished working there until close/cleanup.
All in all, I worked a ten hour shift, roughly no breaks unless you count the journeys between places, and got home at 12:30am. And took a quick shower to stop smelling like grease and passed out on the bed.
It wasn't not fun, I'll admit that. It's a really laid back atmosphere and everyone there's pretty young and awesome, I def. had fun. And sure your hands get cold, but you get used to it and there's enough breaks between customers that you can warm them back up. And this job is only three months at most, so the hours are no big (I'm scheduled for about 60/wk) right now, AND it's money. I just hope I don't burn out too fast - I'll have to remember to actually eat/drink something today.

I might have a job!
Right when I had found out about losing work at Mercury, I'd gone through Kijiji to find any suitable employment and found an awesome one for working at Beaver Tails on the Rideau Canal. This was great for three reason: get to work outdoors in my favourite season, get to work for only a short time so I don't have to worry about the hassle of quitting when new animation work pops up, and I'm actually within walking distance to the Canal, so this bus strike doesn't hurt me a lick (hell, if I can afford it I might be able to buy skates and skate to work. How swell would that be?)
But after weeks of not hearing I figured I applied too late and they'd already found those they needed. Then I got a reply in my inbox today, phoned 'em up and bam! Interview!

I've got the interview tomorrow and with my past experience in food and customer service there's no way I can't get this job. Eeeeee, so happy.

Goddamn this trippy winter weather. My back's been killing me all day - I've spent most of the time just lying on the couch watching Buffy instead of actually doing anything. It's annoying. And to add the fact that I have a slight insomnia, I didn't get to sleep until about 3 this morning, and my day feels weird. I've been trying to plan around looking for work and applying for my unemployment but I've just been feeling... lost. And looking for a job is made harder by the fact that I can't actually go anywhere during this bus strike. What's the point in applying to work somewhere I can't get to? I think I'm just going through a blues period right now. Hopefully I'll get back on track soon.

Otherwise, I've come up with a little project to keep me busy in this unemployment and beyond. Rather than the usual New Years resolutions that we all know last for about a month, I'm going to work on something that'll be fun and will drive me utterly crazy at the same time: watch 500 movies next year.Yep. That's a little under 2 movies to watch a day. Of course, right now I'm having trouble naming 500 movies but I've still a few more days to come up with all the titles I need. The only criteria is that I can't have seen them before. Of course, the fact that I won't watch horror or particularly gory/violent movies is a factor too, or else I'd probably be halfway there. Otherwise, I have just a little under 100 movies listed. So the collecting continues!

Linkspam
Trailers!
'9' teaser 9 was a short animated film I got to see at the OIAF a few years back. I LOVED IT. The fact that they're making a full length feature fills me with squee. *
The Velveteen Rabbit What the shit. Christ guys, if you're going to make a traditional animated movie at least make it look nice. Those designs are goddamn awful. This movie looks like it was made in the nineties
Astro Boy Alright, this looks kinda awesome.
New Monsters vs Aliens trailer includes Ginomica's secret I'm not to keen on the human designs for this, TBH, and Dreamwork's animation has always been too... squishy for me. That was my main issue with Kung fu Panda too, was while the whole thing looks really nice, the facial features seemed animated like plastercine figures melting. It was distracting and will probably be my issue with this movie too.
Other than that, President Colbert is, like, the number one reason to see this. Fuck yeah.

Judge rules Watchmen rights in Fox's favour Dammit, I hope this means that the movie will just be a little late. Or maybe Fox will be all kind and stuff and just keep the original release date. One can hope.

Disney pulls out of third Narnia movie NO DAMMIT THAT'S THE ONLY ONE I REALLY WANTED TO SEE. Motherfuck.

Marley bites in Christmas
Meanwhile: My box office screams: Spirit does delightfully poorly

Since I'm going to go see Benjamin Button sometime this week, might's well have a linespam about it:
Review: Beautiful button * Tim reveres and stands still in Benjamin Button * "Button" all about appearances * Fincher filmed the wrong backwards aging story * Man shot for talking during movie

Wallace and Gromit beat out The Doctor on Christmas day
Eartha Kitt dies at 81
Sex and the City with Werewolves: Fox's new drama Bitches
Video game physiques give guys body image issues too
16 insane discoveries that science can't explain
Oprah tricked again
Tourists rescued from Swiss mountains thanks to magic iPod
Top ten ways to repurpose your old iPod
Tiny company sues Apple, Microsoft and Google
Pirate Party gets massive support in Sweden