Gita Enders
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Hello all. I'm hiding in the house from the chilling rain and I thought, "What a good time to update my moribund journal!" This summer I got myself a new boyfriend, Mark, and we spent the last several months Lost In Relationship and off the computer. Well, he's always off the computer--has never used one--but between him and my full-time volunteering I was barely in the house, much less in front of the screen. More about him in future posts. Things are pretty bad over at the Comfort Zone; there's been a split in the membership due to the bizarre and unpleasant behavior of the manager, and this has forced everyone to take sides. Luckily (?!) I came down with horrible bronchitis a couple of weeks ago, which has allowed me to back-burner this controversy until at least the end of next week. I wouldn't have such a bad case if I wasn't a big baby for the first week, refusing to take antibiotics or even see a doctor. I got an oh-so-rare flu shot for my trouble, having put myself into a respiratory risk category. Mark and I are in the middle of moving to the apartment next door. It's four times the size of mine and just a bit more money. It was supposed to be ready on the first, then the fifteenth, and now it's day by day as the contractors discover more quirks and issues with the hundred-year old wiring and plumbing. I take my annual trip to New York the second week in November (only staying for a week this year), so as long as I get moved at least a couple of weeks before then I'll be okay. This living out of boxes is for the birds. So, I'm more or less caught up on my Friends pages; hugs to those of you who are having a rough time right now. I always blame these things on the change of seasons; this is one of the harder transitions in my book, and things don't really seem to pick up until we get past the winter solstice. Anyway, just wanted to touch base. More detailed thoughts about life, the election and everything coming soon to a browser near you. | ||||||||
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I've gone from carrying the one key to my front door to having keys both to the Jerome Public Library and to Comfort Zone. In addition to facilitating my weekly group, which has gone from Bipolar Support to the all-inclusive Bipolar, Schizoaffective and Schizophrenic Support, I am now the "Volunteer of the Day" on Fridays. This position involves everything from meeting and greeting members to making the coffee and taking out the garbage. I look forward to the opportunity to work with schizophrenics; I have limited experience with them in group and it will be interesting to see how it works out. I look less forward to taking out the garbage (the dumpster is locked, and requires Yet Another Key). But this whole key thing makes me nervous. When anything goes wrong in a public building, the person who gets blamed is the one who has the key. Also, what if I forget the right set of keys? Or lock them inadvertently in one of the buildings? I'm here at the library now, volunteering. There'd better be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. | ||||||||
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Talk Engine's having a party & you're invited! This band is fronted by my very best friend. Check it out. | ||||||||
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Whee! Qwest came by this morning and installed my brand-new DSL, just in time for me to cancel my former dialup account before the invoice date. It's only 256K, but download is spiffy plus I've got my phone free for other things. It's only costing me about $9.00 a month more than my dialup, although the jury's still out on what kind of taxes and surcharges I can expect. The modem has wireless, too, should I come into a laptop anytime soon. I'm glad LiveJournal was available, for a change, to check out the new service. Also tried out the latest Strong Bad short just to see how it went. Also replayed the latest Foamy just for shits and giggles. It's been a somewhat busy week, what with the NAZCARE board meeting on Monday and my usual round of group therapy and the writing class yesterday. Sloppy scheduling meant I didn't make it to the supermarket, so there's a serious grocery shortage in the house at the moment. I'm down to one canteloupe and some tuna fish, unless you count the cardboard bran cereal I'm supposed to be eating to deal with my cholesterol. Tonight I work at the library, and then Thursday and Friday there are meetings at Comfort Zone to do some final setup for the peer support groups. We open for business next Tuesday. | ||||||||
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I am a member of 8 cliques of size 8
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Things seem slightly improved at LiveJournal. Yesterday saw the usual gang in the evening, esafian and broyd. Not only did we not get a walk in, we went out for Chinese food. Score another fattening Saturday for me. There was an art opening at the Jerome Cooperative Artist's Gallery, but we didn't go. Looking in as we passed the gallery coming up the hill, it seemed that nobody was there, so we let it slide. Spoke briefly to bigjimsjazz, hopefully we'll get time for a longer conversation tonight. esafian always has me drive her car when we go to pick up broyd; it's a little Ford Focus that handles so much better than my truck and has air conditioning to boot. I love driving it, and hope for a new car myself one of these days. When I use the cooler at night and then shut it off in the morning I find that the house stays cool all day. I just went out to smoke a cigarette and it's quite hot in the sun; makes me want to stay inside looking at the computer. I've just about finished a book called Model, by Michael Gross. It's a history of the modeling business going back over a hundred years, and it's quite detailed and well researched. If you're interested in models, that is. The subtitle is, "The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women," which about sums up the whole story. I think I'll pay some bills and then shut the internet for a while. Liz says she might be coming up today, and I should give her a call. | ||||||||
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LiveJournal is exhausting me. The last couple of days it's been impossible to load pages or, when they do load, to make comments easily. I wish they'd get around to fixing it. Had meetings at Comfort Zone Wednesday and yesterday. There's another one today, but I think I'll take the day off. I start facilitating peer support groups in two weeks, so I want to grab all the time I can until I have rock-solid commitments. esafian mentioned that she'd like to come up, so I'll try and talk to her around 11:30 and see if that's still the case. Still doing my hundred crunches a day, and I'm up to twenty push-ups as well. Now I'm thinking about adding some weight training. Hopefully that will just drift in sometime during the next couple of weeks the same way the push-ups drifted in after a few weeks of crunches. The pedicure I got down in Scottsdale really needs redoing, and my manicure is getting slovenly as well. I also need a haircut and I'd like a full waxing; I'm getting tired of doing that one myself. Tonight I'll pass by the library. I have no reading material for the weekend, which won't do. | ||||||||
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Taking care of my gmail invites feels so brisk and cutting-edge. I must say it's a nice zippy mail agent, from what little I've used of it. Just got off the phone with Qwest and finally ordered DSL, which recently became available here. I was undecided about whether to rent or buy the modem, but was ultimately convinced to buy it. I rarely spend money on anything, yet this is the second modem I'm buying this year! I will only have the 256K connection at first, but may upgrade to 1.5Mbps if it still seems too slow. Compared with dialup, I imagine even the lower speed will seem quite fast. Finally added push-ups to my so-called exercise regimen. Only managed ten today, but will see what I can pile on as the days go by. I'm down to a flat 100 abdominal crunches per day, but they're getting easier so I hope to add to that too at some point. And now, the last piece of leftover fried chicken. Get that crap out of the house. | ||||||||
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I have what looks like six gmail invites, if anyone is still looking. Just let me have your email address; first come, first served. Not much going on here today. Yesterday I was sitting around reading Transmission by Hari Kunzru when esafian dropped by. She commenced to drag me out on a long walk over hill and dale around some of the less-frequented areas of Jerome. This morning my hips actually hurt when I woke. This weekend my official invitation to the board meeting next Monday arrived in the mail. Predictably, even though the invitation asked that one reply by June 23rd, someone from NAZCARE called this morning to ascertain my response. I can see they're terribly organized. In news of the Small World Theatre, also in the mail was a NYPress clipping from my friend Jackie, on the subject of psychoactive drugs. To my utter astonishment I actually recognized the name of the writer. Didn't Alan Cabal used to be Garbled Uplink on Echo? Anyway, seemed like a fitting topic. It's hot out, and I have no commitments for the rest of the day. Perhaps I should watch a video. | ||||||||
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Not only did I eat a bunch of cookies--at 90 calories per--Wednesday evening at the library, last night I completely went to hell with myself. esafian took me to lunch at the Red Rooster, so when broyd arrived for dinner we went off to the supermarket and got fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, potato salad and ice cream. Yes, ice cream. Haagen-Dazs coffee, to be exact. I also failed to do my crunches yesterday, so the whole day was a write-off in terms of health. Oh well, at least I managed to floss my teeth. | ||||||||
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I finally used the cooler last night. The house was up to about 80 degrees, and while I could have managed to get to sleep, I thought it was time to give the cooler a real-world test, particularly to check if the thermostat worked or if the thing was just going to keep blowing. Bliss. I meant to just cool the house down and then shut it off, but I fell asleep quite readily and slept like a baby. Even though I turned it off when I got up, the house is still fairly cool. I hate to spend more money on the electric bill, but I can see it's going to be hard to resist the intoxicating breezes. Reading Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong, waiting for esafian to arrive for our customary weekend walk. broyd is going to be in Cottonwood today, so we'll probably pick him up later in the day and then hunt and gather some food. | ||||||||
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Normally I work down at NAZCARE on Thursdays, but last week they told us we'd no longer be using the community room at the clinic. We were told we'd be called about starting up in the new location, and so far I haven't heard from anyone. That's okay, I could use a day off. I should really have taken a ride into Cottonwood today anyway; I could use some things from the supermarket and it's also time for a run to Wally World as well for household items. But I have a nice shady parking spot, which I think I'll keep hold of for a little while. So far about all I've done today is my stomach crunches followed by eating lunch. Spoke to my sister, who's going on vacation at the end of the week. Guess I'll spend the rest of the day reading a book. | ||||||||
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This morning I received a phone call from someone on the NAZCARE board thanking me for "stepping up" and filling me in on some of the responsibilities of being on the board of a not-for-profit. I dread. Apparently, some employees from one of the drop-in centers are suing the organization. She wasn't clear on the details, but the action has something to do with people who started up the center not being hired for some of the "better" jobs. I should mention that at this time, the "better" jobs are somewhat thankless and low-paying mandates that no one in their right mind would want to fill. Of course, most people wanting these jobs are not necessarily entirely in their right minds, as they are only open to "consumers" of services for the mentally ill, or as I like to think of us, "mental patients". It seems that this lawsuit will be on the agenda for the June meeting. Other than that, she told me very little apart from the fact that she "just sits and listens" and that everyone is expected to be a "team player". Being part of a listening team doesn't sound very taxing at all. She pointed out that most of the work of these meetings is actually handled by the paid staff of the organization, which should make for a great deal of entertaining listening. I'm okay with that. I should be receiving a packet in the mail before the meeting, consisting of a binder in which are listed the organization's by-laws as well as a metric buttload of PowerPoint presentations explaining how to be a team player. Reminds me of the old corporate days, where the first principle of meetings was to take up a lot of everyone's time sitting and listening while bearing in mind the notion of team playing. In other news, it's a little warm here but not quite enough to justify using the cooler. Workmen are next door, converting The Former Neighbor's 2,200 square feet into three smaller apartments. I never thought I'd welcome the noise of construction, but since said Neighbor moved out my days and evenings have been blissfully free of 1970s disco tunes and oversized visiting dogs. Tonight I volunteer at the library for a couple of hours. Richard said he'd drop by and return the latest Andrew Vachss novel so I could have a crack at it. In the interest of TMI, I might go ahead and wax my lower legs this afternoon, after I do my hundred abdominal crunches. All in all, it's shaping up to be a good day. | ||||||||
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They came to fix the cooler on Saturday, but it's been cool enough in the evenings here not to have needed it. The landlord came by this morning, though, and wanted to test it. He brought in a ladder and opened up all my vents, and we did manage to cool the apartment by a few degrees before I shut it down. It seems to work all right, but I won't have any idea of its effectiveness until the temperature rises. Meanwhile, I'd rather have the naturally cool evenings. Now I have to go down to Cottonwood for various appointments, and then the library this evening. | ||||||||
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Today I'm in the library from noon to six, covering for the regular librarian. We get quite a lot of business on Saturdays, I'm happy to report. At six is the Fire Department's annual pot luck, so I'll probably wander down to the park and have something to eat. I didn't think to make a dish to bring since I had forgotten all about it until Matt Bell reminded me, but I hope that can be overlooked. Then at eight is the opening of our local movie theatre, which has been closed for about 75 years. They're having student films on the topic of ghost stories by filmmakers from a nearby high school. I don't know if I'll last that long into the evening, though. The library tires me out and I'm usually in bed by 9:30 on nights I volunteer. I spent the day yesterday with osirusinamon and his lady Ruth, who are in from Detroit. Ruth is a nurse and had an interview at the hospital in Flagstaff; if she gets the job they'll probably be moving to Arizona. broyd is in Mexico this weekend for the wedding of his friends Brian and Amanda. I wouldn't mind a little sun and fun myself. | ||||||||
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In an alarming turn of events, today I was named to the Board of Directors of NAZCARE, the nonprofit organization that oversees the drop-in center for the mentally ill. Responsibilities consist of going to two-day quarterly meetings, working on things such as determining the salary of the CEO and helping to make policy. The mind boggles. This evening I had dinner with Richard (pork enchiladas, mmmm). We watched Master and Commander which to my surprise I liked very much. Did 130 crunches this morning. I started at 20 and added 10 a day until I reached the current number. I'm not sure what's a reasonable goal here, and I'd like to start adding push-ups either tomorrow or over the weekend. Still no word on the writing, and I mean that literally. Not one word. This weekend I'll either have a eureka moment, or submit something old for new criticism. | ||||||||
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Been a while since I checked in. There was an envelope of pictures of my niece and nephew in the mail this morning, which was fun. Then I went and got a manicure. In New York I kept my nails manicured regularly, but until recently there were no shops out where I live. Now that we have them they're more expensive than in New York, and not as good, but it was still a little treat. I've been working in the library on Wednesday nights; it's amazingly busy. In other volunteer news, it looks like I start working at the drop-in center in July facilitating support groups. The writing workshop isn't going so well; I missed my last deadline and now I'm supposed to have something in next Tuesday. Hope to get somewhere on that tomorrow. On Saturday they installed an evaporative cooler in my apartment, but it seems they forgot to turn on the water pump so it doesn't cool, just blows air around. Hopefully they'll come fix this tomorrow. I've lived in this apartment nearly six years without cooling; it has, however, been quite hot at night here and I'll really welcome a change. Haven't been posting, but have been reading you all. | ||||||||
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This post comes to you live from Scottsdale, where I'm down visiting with bigjimsjazz. We're having a blast, mostly just hanging out and about around the town. I love it down here. Saturday we went to hear some jazz at the Wrigley Mansion, brought to us by none other than aristophren, followed up by a further visit on Sunday with Bill and his lady at a local coffee shop. For Mother's Day Jim grilled up some steak and shrimp, which was probably the best dinner I've had all year. I'm really enjoying myself visiting with Jim and his mom, to say nothing of his two dogs Sarge and Sarah (even if she did nip once at the back of my leg). Jim picked me up a Prosperity Buddha this morning at a shop called China Chic at the Fashion Square mall; I can use all the help I can get in that department! I'm going to browse my Friends page, which is probably up to about 900 entries since I last was able to look at it. I hope I don't miss anything important... | ||||||||
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Gita Enders
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